VOGONS


Reply 20 of 27, by Zup

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Yesterday I used Clonezilla + Gparted (both lastest versions) to clone a 10Gb HDD into a 40Gb one.

The source HDD was installed into a IBM Thinkpad T42, and I cloned it to an image via USB. I restored that image into a Toshiba Satellite Pro SP4340 maxed to 320 Mb RAM (Clonezilla needs 196 Mb to run). Because I was thinking about erasing the source disk, I restored the image as is and then modified it with Gparted (it could have been expanded with clonezilla, but I wanted to test it before expanding).

The contents of that HDD were four partitions (plus GRUB to make it work):
1.- 2Gb FAT16 partition with MS-DOS 6.22 installed.
2.- 6Gb FAT32 partition with Windows 98SE installed (later expanded to almost 30Gb).
3.- 2Gb ext4 partition with Puppy Linux 5.2.8 installed (later expanded to about 8Gb).
4.- A linux swap partition.

Everything worked fine. I expected GRUB to fail because it can fail if his boot data (usually contained in the Linux partition) is moved or resized, but it worked perfectly.

So, Clonezilla can copy any FAT partition without troubles. The only downside is that latest versions eat too much RAM. That's not a problem if you use a modern computer, but maybe your old systems can't run it. Maybe older versions of clonezilla will work with less RAM, but I couldn't use them (I tried with those included in Parted Magic 2012 and 2013 but they couldn't copy the ext4 filesystem without reverting to old reliable dd).

Other thoughts:
- Norton Ghost have some advantages over Clonezilla. It runs with less RAM, and there are tools to extract files from their images (Clonezilla can only restore the entire image but not extract a single file from it). On the downside, the boot media is DOS based (at least the one I have) so it won't run on UEFI only or USB only computers.
- There are free versions of Acronis True Image. Some years ago when I bought a WD HDD, WD had in their site some kind of Acronis WD Edition. It was a special edition of Acronis True Image that anybody could use provided he has a WD HDD (that sayd the site, I never tried if it worked without that). So, if you have a WD drive (even connected to USB ports, you're free to use Acronis 😉
- A disk imaging tool that runs on modern OSs? Most tools runs offline (=they boot their own media) so using them in a computer that have Windows 10 installed wouldn't be an issue.
- If you want a tool that runs over Windows 10 and can make images from USB connected disks (remember that most tools can't copy a mounted partition), forget about Clonezilla and dd (and maybe ddrescue) because they are only for Linux.

I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...

I'm selling some stuff!

Reply 21 of 27, by lolo799

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g4u is a bootable backup/restore to/from ftp and clone tool based on NetBSD and that uses dd and gzip, it's commandline only
http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

There's also HDD Raw Copy Tool for Windows
http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool/

Versions of dd compiled for Windows
http://www.chrysocome.net/dd
and http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/coreutils.htm

This windows tool can do bit by bit copy of partitions, usually used for usb drives and flash media
http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/

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Reply 22 of 27, by ultra_code

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Bummer (regarding other Windows programs' image formats). However, what you said regarding dd's images sounds very, very, um, neat, convenient, simple, good? However you want to phrase it, that sounds like a great way to make HDD backups. I'll definitely try it out, Dracolich. Now, when will the Amazon gods get that 2TB external HDD to me... 😀

I'm still open to alternatives, though. If anyone has any more to share, please, share away!

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Reply 23 of 27, by ultra_code

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Zup and _lolo799, sorry for making it look like I didn't see your posts. I think I accidentally glossed over them somehow.

So Zup, according to you Clonezilla can restore images just fine, regardless of the OSes on the image? Then I guess my previous experience with it was either a fluke, or I wasn't using it properly. 😀 Also, what you said regarding Clonezilla's and Ghost's memory usage was enlightening, and it turns out, it looks like you can still get Acronis WD Edition (it looks like it's for free):

The tools you provided _lolo799 look interesting, especially that "HDD Raw Copy Tool" (I'm gonna give this a try alongside dd). I think, though, I'd rather stay away from "Win32 Disk Imager", though, since it's intended target is flash drives and such, at least personally. 😀

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Reply 24 of 27, by RichPimp

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HDClone 7 from Miray has worked well for me for Win 98 and newer, and is in fact the only backup/cloning software I've gotten to successfully work on a Win 98 hard drive. Everything else I've tried hasn't booted properly. I did have to pay for it, but it wasn't much and well worth the price. I have not tried Clonezilla, of which I've always heard good things.

Reply 25 of 27, by ultra_code

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So, RichRimp, HDClone 7, eh? Noted. 😀

Also, Dracolich, I tried out ddrescue last night with both my P3 and P4 systems' hard drives, and man, did it work nicely. Just like you said, the images could be open by anything that could read .img files (Linux Mint's default image mounter and WinImage under Windows 10 opened both images without a hitch (although I couldn't access the Windows XP NTFS partition in the P4's image using Linux's image mounter - WinImage accessed that partition in the image just fine; guess it's a Linux thing (shrug)).

I'll try out HDD Raw Copy tool like you suggested _lolo799 later, too, not just to see if it works like ddrescue (which I'm sure it does almost identically) - I want another software to do a backup as well, so just in case one software's backup doesn't work out, the other might. Although, because both ddrescue and HDD Raw Copy create raw images, I don't think I would need to worry about something like that, so I'm not going to have another software (like HDD Raw Copy) make as many backups as ddrescue. 😀

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Reply 26 of 27, by lolo799

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the_ultra_code wrote:

The tools you provided _lolo799 look interesting, especially that "HDD Raw Copy Tool" (I'm gonna give this a try alongside dd). I think, though, I'd rather stay away from "Win32 Disk Imager", though, since it's intended target is flash drives and such, at least personally. 😀

Win32 Disk Imager should work fine if the hhd you want to backup has only one partition.
You can compare dumps made by this and other raw image making tools like dd, ddrescue, HDD Raw Copy Tool and g4u, they should turned out to be the exact same.

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Reply 27 of 27, by ultra_code

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lolo799 wrote:

Win32 Disk Imager should work fine if the hhd you want to backup has only one partition.

That would make sense, like in the case of my P3 system that just has a large Win98SE partition, though I'm guessing it wouldn't work with my dual-partition+custom-MBR P4 system, if that's the case. Good to know, though.

lolo799 wrote:

You can compare dumps made by this and other raw image making tools like dd, ddrescue, HDD Raw Copy Tool and g4u, they should turned out to be the exact same.

Yeah, don't see why not. If all of these programs create images on a byte-by-byte basis, then probably the only differences between them comes down to how each exactly does it. 😀

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