Clonezilla partition clone and backup tool

Reanimation

To restore an image, simply go through the whole procedure in reverse order. That is, you need to select the following menu items in the order Start_Clonezilla | device-image | local_dev and attach the medium with the image, if applicable; then, select the image, specify the directory containing the image, and opt for Beginner mode. Because you will be restoring a partition to disk, restoreparts is the correct mode to choose. Clonezilla should now show you the image or images to restore – if not, you might have chosen the wrong medium in a previous step.

Next you must decide on a partition to which Clonezilla will restore the image. Again, this will destroy any existing data on the partition; consider your decision carefully. The target partition must be exactly the same size as the original partition; if it is larger, you are just wasting space.

In some special cases, you can modify the system in the image to match its new home environment, but this requires the Expert mode with the use of the -r parameter.

Next, you need to confirm the command line shown in green and check the summary once more. After confirming the settings by pressing y, Clonezilla will prompt you once again, just to be sure. Do not interrupt the write process unless you really do want a partition that is full of junk data.

Removal Helpers

To clone a partition or a hard disk, select device-device from the menu shown in Figure 3 and then opt for Beginner mode. The next screen gives you the option of transferring the whole disk to another local disk (disk_to_local_disk), to transfer the whole disk over the wire (disk_to_remote_disk), to clone a single partition on a local disk (part_to_local_part), or to send a single partition across the network. If your old disk is running out of space, you can simply install a second disk, launch Clonezilla, and then select the first option. At this point, you should be careful because you must select the Source from the list shown to you (that is, the partition or disk you would like to clone).

Next select the Target, which is the partition on the new disk that Clonezilla will overwrite with the copy, thus destroying any data you have on the target medium. Finally, check all the settings once more and press y to confirm.

Conclusions

Clonezilla Live, which was developed at the NCHC (National Center for High Performance Computing [2]) in Taiwan, is a fast, free, and user-friendly tool for backing up complete disks. Although Clonezilla uses compression, full backups can be fairly large, and the tool does not offer incremental backups at the time of this writing. For these reasons, Clonezilla should be considered as something to supplement your daily backup routine.

Another thing Clonezilla does not offer is partitioning. Live CDs by third parties have found a solution to this failing. For example, GParted-Clonezilla includes the GParted [3] partitioning program. You will also find Clonezilla on a variety of rescue CDs, such as Parted Magic 4.2 [4], which was released in June 2009.

Infos

  1. Clonezilla project: http://clonezilla.org
  2. Clonezilla at NCHC: http://www.nchc.org.tw/en/collaborative_research/fsl/
  3. GParted-Clonezilla Live CD: http://gpartedclonz.tuxfamily.org
  4. Parted Magic: http://partedmagic.com

« Previous 1 2 3

Our Services

comments powered by Disqus

Visit Our Shop

Trial Subscription

Digital Subscription

Subscribe

Direct Download

Tag Cloud

Android Bruce Byfield Gnome KDE Linux Pro Magazine Open Source Projects Red Hat Ubuntu events foss free software google linux

News