Software & security

Computer games

Life topics

Hillbilly physics

Greatest

Free Imaging software - CloneZilla & PartIma

Backing up your system (and documents) is more than just copying a lot of files to ano location. Here's an example for you: Let's say you want to backup your operating syste Windows, for example. So, you copy every single file on the drive C: to an external dev and then copy the contents to a hard disk on another machine. And then you try other machine. Nothing will happen.

The other system will not be bootable, even though you have copied just about any file can see and access. This is because operating systems do not work the way we perceiv them. We see files, but these files are only meaningful to a file system that can read interpret them. For example, the NTFS file structure is only useful to systems that can r this file system, like Windows, Mac and some Linux distributions. An old DOS machine c read a hard disk formatted with NTFS, for instance.

Introduction - what is imaging?

Beneath the file system, resides the most basic structure of any device - disk sectors are actual, physical parcels containing the data, regardless of the file system used. If th structure is mirrored to another device, it is possible to create an exact clone. Any oper system that exists on the device will not know any difference.

This is what imaging is all about. Imaging is a process during which the device structure the entire contents are copied, sector by sector to a backup file called image. If you tak image and extract it to a device, overriding any existing, previous structure, you will created a perfect copy of the imaged system, the way it was the moment the image wa taken.

This grants computer users the ability to not only save the actual files, but the actual st of a device, be it a hard disk, a partition or any other, frozen in time at the moment it w created. These temporal snapshots can then be restored at later times, allowing the use

undo changes to their devices (and the relevant operating systems). This opens a window of opportunity and flexibility, in regard to backup, testing and disaster recovery

Any serious computer user will deploy some sort of imaging software in his/her arsenal use them periodically, to backup their operating system and also restore them, if neede

I can give you a personal example. In the last 3 years, I have backed up my systems a 200 times and restored some of them about 20-30 times, for various reasons, mainly software testing. Imagine that I had to reinstall the systems instead of imageevery time. Imagine the time cost, the long hours needed to reinstall everything and configure the applications, to say nothing of the additional nuisance the Windows opera system poses with its Activation policy.

Unfortunately, most imaging software products cost a lot of money. Furthermore, since imaging is such an important and crucial procedure, you cannot risk the chance of using second-hand imaging software. Luckily, there are two excellent free programs that offe reliability and quality that you require - CloneZilla and PartImage.

Both these programs are relatively easy to use, if not the easiest. On the other hand, th are fast, reliable and very much free. They will also work with practically any filesystem including Windows NTFS.

In this article, I will reach you how to use them to backup your system, demonstrating use of each in rich detail. I will use CloneZilla to backup an Ubuntu station and then I w PartImage to backup a Windows machine.

Requirements

Both of these programs require that you be able to burn ISO files to CD/DVD, live CD and in general, understand the Linux notation of hard drives and partitions course, know what hard disks and partitions are. There is also some use of the comman involved.

If you're not ready for this, maybe CloneZilla and PartImage are not for you. Just be aw that many payware imaging solutions also require some knowledge of the hardware terminology. It is definitely worth spending some time reading and learning how to mas this area.

But do not let this deter you. The programs ARE rather simple - and you have my tutor guide you, step by step. Furthermore, here's a list of several other articles I have writte which can help you prepare for the task at hand. Installing SUSE Linux - Full tutorial Installing (K)ubuntu Linux - Full tutorial Dual booting - Windows & Linux Highly useful Linux commands & configurations

CloneZilla
Homepage

CloneZilla is a fast, light imaging software that runs from a CD. It is well suited for desk use, as well as massive deployment in server environment. CloneZilla is rather simple to use. Let's demonstrate.

First, download the ISO and burn it to CD/DVD. Next, choose a computer that you want test it on and boot from the CD on that machine. For testing purposes, this can also be virtual machine, in case you're afraid to tamper with your real system.

The boot menu offers you to launch the application in a number of graphic modes, switc the local hard disks and boot from them, boot from the network, run a memory test, or into FreeDOS. We'll choose the first option.

Next, choose your language and keyboard map.

Confirm your choice:

Start CloneZilla:

First, you need to decide whether you wish to image or clone your system. The differen in the output. Imaging results in a file being created. Cloning results in a target drive / partition being rewritten during the cloning process - for instance, this is useful if you h bought a new hard disk and want to use it instead of the old one. However, for now, we wish to image our system.

Now, we need to mount a local partition that will be our target. We will create the imag save it to this partition.

Before we do that, let us understand what we have here. Our system is Ubuntu, with th partitions, root, home and swap. root is a primary partition, hence the notation second partition is hda2, which is the extended partition, inside which numerous partitions can reside. Logical partitions begin with the notation hda5 - or sda5 because the first four numbers are reserved for primary partitions. Swap is our root (/) Extended partition swap home (/home) hda1 hda2 hda5 hda6

Now, hda6 is thus the second logical partition - and it is the home partition of our Ubun system. This is where we will save the image of the root partition.

Please notice the last entry in the image above. /dev/hda6 is the target partition that w mounted.

Now, you need to decide what you want to do, backup or restore your system. The opti savedisk allows you to backup the entire hard disk. The option restoredisk allows you to restore an image of an entire hard disk. The third option, saveparts, allows you to back only individual partitions. And accordingly, restoreparts allows you to restore individual partitions. We wish to backup individual partitions.

Some advanced options, no need to tamper with:

Choose the compression:

Choose the name for the image:

Next, you need to select the source partition - the one we want to image. This is our ro hda1. Please note that hda6 is no longer available. This is because mounted partitions c be imaged. They need to be unmounted. CloneZilla automatically removes mounted partitions from the menu.

You are ready to image.

Confirm your choice:

The imaging process will now begin. It takes only about 4-5 minutes for a typical Ubunt installation.

After the imaging process is done, you will be taken to a console. You'll have the choice restart CloneZilla again and create another image, power off the machine or reboot.

Now, let's boot into Ubuntu. Indeed, here's our image. Job done, as the peasant Orc in Warcraft likes to say!

PartImage
Homepage

PartImage is slightly more difficult than CloneZilla. This is because some of the operatio that CloneZilla does automatically need to be performed manually. Nevertheless, and reliable and should be considered when weighing out imaging solutions.

PartImage comes bundled as a part of numerous Linux distribution. One of the best too have - and which includes PartImage - is the SystemRescueCD, a bootable Linux live CD specializes in diagnosis, repair and recovery of crashed systems. You can read more about SystemRescueCD in my article A (cool) list of Linux tool many other useful tools, SystemRescueCD also includes GParted, an excellent disk partitioning tool, TestDisk, a great tool for recovering lost partitions and data. So let's begin using PartImage. First, we will boot off the SystemRescueCD live CD.

Hit Enter to continue. After a few moments, the system will boot. By default, SystemRescueCD boots into the command-line mode. But don't worry. Type startx console and hit Enter. You will reach the desktop shortly.

Now, before we start using PartImage, let us review our setup. We want to backup a Windows XP C: drive to another partition (in this case, E:). Since SystemRescueCD is a tool, it will use the Linux notation for the partitions. The Windows C: drive must be a pr partition - and it will most likely be the first, thus it will be either hda1 or sda1

Additional Windows partitions are usually logical (if created when installing Windows XP Therefore, they will be marked hda6, hda7 (or sda6, sda7) etc. But why guess? Let's ch As we've said earlier, SystemRescueCD comes with some handy tools, including a powe partitioning program, GParted. Let's power it up and examine our layout.

Here, we can see our partitions. sda1 is our Windows C:. We will back it up to it has most space.

If you have noticed a warning earlier, before typing startx, there are two things we mus before we can use PartImage. We must mount our target partition, so we can save to it.

Since our target partition is formatted as NTFS, we will have to use a special driver, cal NTFS-3g, which allows Linux systems to read and write to NTFS partitions. We must do manually, from the command line. Actually, this is the only difficult part of the whole th Let's first create a mount point: mkdir /mnt/win-backup Then, we need to mount the sda5: ntfs-3g /dev/sda5 /mnt/win-backup -o force This is what it looks like:

And checking through GParted, we can see sda5 is now mounted.

Now, start PartImage:

First, we need to select the source partition (sda1) and give the name to our image. In case, it will be: /mnt/win-backup/windows-c-backup-2008-08-21

Press F5 to continue. Next, we need to select some advanced options. There's no need change anything. The default settings are good enough. The only thing you may want t change is whether you wish to split the image into smaller files, so they can fit onto CD the arrow keys to navigate.

Add comments, if necessary:

You will be warned that NTFS support is experimental. Don't worry, everything will work fine.

You will be presented with some info about the NTFS-formatted partition you're about t image.

And the actual imaging process will begin. It takes about 5 minutes for a 1GB Windows installation, but this is slower than the results you'll have with Linux filesystems. Even s PartImage is somewhat slower than CloneZilla.

After you're done, reboot into Windows. Indeed, everything looks good. The image foot is approx. 40% of the original size (400MB).

Recovery!

Oh yes, you should test your saved images work. There's no point creating system only to discover that they do not really work in the time of emergency. Now, you surely not want to test software with your production setup, so you should make sure there's spare box around - or maybe a virtual machine, which you can use to test the functiona the imaging software during the restore. This is possibly the most important part. If you need help, ping me.

Conclusion

CloneZilla and PartImage are excellent products, if you are willing to spend the extra fiv minutes learning the few basic principles that you require to use them. On the other ha they cost nothing, are reliable and efficient, and will provide you with an efficient -restore solution, for both Windows and Linux systems. Well, have a good day, fellas.

del.icio.us

stumble

digg

reddit

slashdot

Hyper-V VM Backup VMs Backup and Replication tool with Global Deduplication. Get now! StarWindSoftware.com/Hyper Hotels in Port Dickson New hotel deals every day. Low rates guaranteed. Book now! Agoda.com/Port_Dickson Download Chrome Browser Quick & User Friendly. Free Install Top Features. Get Your Chrome Now!

Top

Home

Terms of use

Contact me