Hard drive imaging
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From: Andy Cap on 20 Jun 2008 07:50 Hi I presently use Drive Image on my old Windows box. Yesterday after trialling and removing a network monitor, it did a lot of damage but I was able to restore an image and add a few up-todate files and was back up and working again in just over 2 hours. Now before finally binning it, I want exactly the same facility on my Fedora 8 box. i.e. I don't want to worry about what kind of partitions I've got or in fact ANY technical details. I simply want to boot from this Application's CD and reload a complete working image, either from disk or over a LAN. I'm happy to pay, though not $800 !! Is such a relaible program available ? Thanks. Andy
From: Ian Rawlings on 20 Jun 2008 07:54 On 2008-06-20, Andy Cap <Andy_Cap(a)nosuch.co.uk> wrote: > i.e. I don't want to worry about what kind of partitions I've got or in fact ANY > technical details. I simply want to boot from this Application's CD and reload a > complete working image, either from disk or over a LAN. I've not tried it myself, but a friend has had good results with clonezilla. -- Blast off and strike the evil Bydo empire! http://youtube.com/user/tarcus69 http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarcus/sets/
From: C. on 20 Jun 2008 08:35 On Jun 20, 12:50 pm, Andy Cap <Andy_...(a)nosuch.co.uk> wrote: > Hi > > I presently use Drive Image on my old Windows box. Yesterday after trialling and > removing a network monitor, it did a lot of damage but I was able to restore an > image and add a few up-todate files and was back up and working again in just > over 2 hours. Now before finally binning it, I want exactly the same facility > on my Fedora 8 box. > > i.e. I don't want to worry about what kind of partitions I've got or in fact ANY > technical details. I simply want to boot from this Application's CD and reload a > complete working image, either from disk or over a LAN. > > I'm happy to pay, though not $800 !! Is such a relaible program available ? > Thanks. > > Andy I've previously used Norton Ghost to image Windows and Linux boxes without any problems. C.
From: Tim Clark on 20 Jun 2008 10:59 In article <054f3911-8c9f-4a23-bc88-6acacff891e2(a)t54g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>, "C." <colin.mckinnon(a)gmail.com> writes: > On Jun 20, 12:50 pm, Andy Cap <Andy_...(a)nosuch.co.uk> wrote: >> >> I presently use Drive Image on my old Windows box. Yesterday after trialling and >> removing a network monitor, it did a lot of damage but I was able to restore an >> image and add a few up-todate files and was back up and working again in just >> over 2 hours. Now before finally binning it, I want exactly the same facility >> on my Fedora 8 box. >> >> i.e. I don't want to worry about what kind of partitions I've got or in fact ANY >> technical details. I simply want to boot from this Application's CD and reload a >> complete working image, either from disk or over a LAN. >> >> I'm happy to pay, though not $800 !! Is such a relaible program available ? >> Thanks. > > I've previously used Norton Ghost to image Windows and Linux boxes > without any problems. I too use Norton Ghost, with a few other things in my repertoire. For a start I wouldn't be without a boot floppy (or its modern virtual equivalent on CD or memory stick) of the "Universal TCP/IP Network Bootdisk" from http://www.netbootdisk.com/ which allows the PC to boot up in DOS and gain access to the local network, on which my laptop (running Linux) is offering samba shares with the Ghost program and also a place to load/dump the images to. Another technique, which I last used earlier this week, works well for small disks or partitions. An XP system I look after had taken to "blue screening" recently. Since all important data is held on a Linux server, and I don't trust XP's "rollbacks", my approach is to re-image its "C" partition from an image I took with Ghost 10 months ago. Before I do that, ever cautious, I want to save its current state. I could have used Norton Ghost, but a good alternative was to boot the PC from a live Linux CD distribution (I used Knoppix), mount up a filesystem on my laptop, over the network, with plenty of free space on it, and simply copy the partition over, something like dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/mnt/laptop/images/hda1_080620 Then after I've re-imaged that partition with the old Ghost image of it, should I decide I really want to put it back as it was, then I simply boot it from the Knoppix CD and do the dd in the other direction, as root dd of=/dev/hda1 if=/mnt/laptop/images/hda1_080620 The real advantage to that simple copying method is that I can mount the copied image for browsing through on the laptop I've copied it to. Even better, I can make that filesystem available over the network as a samba share so the re-imaged XP PC can access its old "C: disk". This is much better than the Norton Ghost "Ghostwalk" program. For longer term storage of the image it makes sense to compress it, with bunzip2 or whatever you favour. This is where Norton Ghost does win out though. If it knows the structure of the filesystem on the partition, it only saves the in-use blocks. dd is copying the raw image, unused blocks and all, without any regard to any filesystem structure. Let's take a particularly extreme example. Suppose the partition were 10GB and held an NTFS filesystem currently less than 10% full, but which has been used close to capacity in the past holding GIF files. With Norton Ghost and using compression, the image is going to be less than 1GB. Using dd the image will be 10GB (it always is the same size as the partition it's copying) but it won't compress very well, because it's got loads of blocks full of incompressible data (fragments of the old deleted GIFs). There's one trick which ought to get round that. Before copying the partition, run a live CD version of Linux mount the filesystem of the partition in question in read/write mode then start creating a huge file full of nulls on it, until that file fills the remainder of the unused space, then remove it: dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/hda1/nulls rm /mnt/hda1/nulls Warning: filling the partition has always been something I've felt too nervous about doing, so haven't done myself yet. In general, _writing_ to a partition you wish to preserve goes against the grain! The furthest I've gone is that I've created files of a specific size which don't quite fill the partition. If you hit maximum filesize limits for a particular filesystem, it's going to need several separate files. The result is that the partition now has its unused areas full of zeros, so will compress nicely. I think the trick should even work when dumping images with Norton Ghost of filesystems which it doesn't recognise. I'm not quite sure how Ghost deals with filesystems it doesn't know. I'm assuming it simply copies them byte for byte, but others might know more definitely. -- Tim Clark
From: chris on 23 Jun 2008 04:37
Andy Cap wrote: > Hi > > I presently use Drive Image on my old Windows box. Yesterday after trialling and > removing a network monitor, it did a lot of damage but I was able to restore an > image and add a few up-todate files and was back up and working again in just > over 2 hours. Now before finally binning it, I want exactly the same facility > on my Fedora 8 box. > > i.e. I don't want to worry about what kind of partitions I've got or in fact ANY > technical details. I simply want to boot from this Application's CD and reload a > complete working image, either from disk or over a LAN. > > I'm happy to pay, though not $800 !! Is such a relaible program available ? > Thanks. > Have you had a look at System Rescue CD (http://www.sysresccd.org)? It's a liveCD which includes the Linux disk imaging app (amongst many others) partimage. I've used partimage a bit in the past to move partitions around, but not as a necessity as yet, and I like it. |