Skip to main content

Using Clonezilla to Back Up a Windows Drive

I was asked by my daughter to build a MS Windows computer that she could use for her work-from-home job. Normally, I would have provided a Linux workstation, but her job required software that was Windows-only. I put together a Shuttle XS35 computer that included two hard drives, one for Windows and one for Linux on which I installed Windows7 and Mageia6 respectively.

No matter how much I warn her and no matter how much anti-virus software is installed, she will install some application or browse a web page that will install some manner of malware. Rather than spend hours trying to remove it, I figured it would be easier to simply restore a properly-configured Windows7 installation from a backup image of her hard drive.

Clonezilla is a partition and disk imaging/cloning program similar to Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image and is available as FOSS. Supporting a variety of file systems, Clonezilla can archive Linux, MS Windows, Mac OS and the BSDs. It is also part of DRBL, Diskless Remote Boot in Linux, a server that provides a diskless Linux installation environment.

Clonezilla is provided as a bootable ISO image or as a ZIP file that can be manipulated into a bootable flash drive. It is also possible, depending on the size of the restorable image, to include it on a rescue Flash drive, a rescue DVD, or a rescue portable disk drive. These images could also be encrypted and can be saved on a local or networked drive. The only significant limitation is that the new target drive must be equal to or larger than the original drive. Sadly, spanning multiple DVDs is not supported.

The links for downloading the ISO image are found here. The underlying OS is Ubuntu- or Debian-based. You have your choice of architectures to fit your hardware. Making a clone of your hard drive is CPU-intensive, so it pays to choose correctly.

Putting Clonezilla on a USB Flash drive is more involved, but not that difficult as long as you follow these directions. I used "GNU/Linux Method B: Manual" down the page a little, which also provides the download link for the ZIP file you'll need to use.

There are boot parameters available for Clonezilla that are detail on this page. Booting from the USB Flash drive, the bootloader is syslinux. The bootloader varies depending on which bootable version you choose. These parameters allow you to script the operation you are executing, so hands-free operation is possible. Some examples of using the boot parameter are found in this document.

Curiously, I discovered that installing Clonezilla from the Mageia repositories failed to launch the application, the trouble being that the appropriate dependencies are not installed. I'll do some research and file a bug report. Looking at past bug reports, this seems to be a recurring problem.

As I work out some of the kinks, I'll add to this.

RESOURCES

Clonezilla Homepage

Simple HOWTO with Screenshots

Clonezilla-SysRescCD -- I haven't had a chance to check this out, but it looks interesting, combining Clonezilla with SystemRescueCD on a multi-boot CD.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DOS4GW.EXE Version 2.01a and Alternative DOS Extenders

DOS4GW.EXE The Tenberry DOS extender DOS4GW.EXE was used by many early DOS games. I still enjoy playing many of these games and DOS4GW.EXE is usable with DOSBox , so they can be played on Linux. However, the version of DOS4GW.EXE that was included with the game was whatever was current at the time. The most recent version that includes many bugfixes that possibly affected the games when used with DOSBox have been fixed in the latest version, 2.01a. It's not free at US$49, but you can downloaded it here . Simply substitute it for whatever version of DOS4GW.EXE your game provided and enjoy the bug-fixed goodness. Tenberry also makes a "high-performance" "pro" version of DOS4GW.EXE, but it costs $300. I think that they could sell quite a few of these to hobby users (since, you know, DOS is dead) for US$5. Open Souce to the Rescue There are better performing, free and Open Source alternatives available and worth a look. DPMI Explained Let's unders...
1 comment
Read more

Unpack those .EXE game files from GOG.com (Plus other un-packers)

I just came upon innoextract today. I have many of the wonderful games from GOG.com, some of which have native Linux Clients. Before now, I've had to use PlayOnLinux or Crossover to install these for use with WINE, then add the Linux client. InnoSetup as a way to create an installer to install the games on Windows.  Daniel Scharrer has created innoextract to allow the unpacking of those archives on a non-Windows platform. The website provides information on using innoextract , but this information from the page is very useful: GOG.com Installers GOG.com installers with a 2.x.x version number on the download page or in the filename use InnoSetup 5.5.0 and cannot be extracted by innoextract 1.2 and older. Older installers use InnoSetup 5.2.3 and usually have no version in the filename. Some GOG.com multi-part installers with version 2.1.x or higher use RAR archives (renamed to .bin) to store the game data. These files are not part of the InnoSetup installer and require...
1 comment
Read more

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault on Modern Linux

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault contains the original MOH and the two expansion packs, Spearhead and Breakthrough. MOH was first released in 2002. There is a Linux installer , released by Iculus, for the game, but it is for the original version and is a beta release. The libraries it needs are not available in a modern Linux. There is a standalone Linux binary available here . To use it, install the game on a Windows computer, patch it up to the latest level and then copy the installed game to a Linux computer. Place this downloaded archive in the root of the MOH directory and launch the game with ./mohaa_lnx . An attempt to use Crossover 16 to install the game failed as it was not possible to switch to the second DVD disc. There is a possible solution to this by creating a single DVD installation disk for MOH:AA. This process is described here . Reminder:   DVD5 = 4.70 GB DVD9 = 7.95 GB Better yet would be to create a single DVD that would encompass the original MOH...
Post a Comment
Read more