It kind of hurts that the image is the same size as the SD card when the card might be pretty much empty, but it does make recovery easier.
Actually I think rpi clone can clone down to a smaller sd card
https://github.com/billw2/rpi-clone
You could clone down to like a 4 gig SD card, and then back up that SD card.
It kind of hurts that the image is the same size as the SD card when the card might be pretty much empty, but it does make recovery easier.