clonezilla help

[Sawer]

I'm new to LMDE and would like to backup my LMDE system. I've downloaded and burned Clonezilla, all good so far. I've read a couple of how to's but they don't seem to make sense to me, maybe I'm missing something. If I choose disc to image I don't see how to select just my LMDE partitions, I have both a / and /home. I'm backing up to a external HD which is showing up. Do I need to make a partition ion the external HD? Right now it's just one big one labeled storage.
Thanks for any insight

[GeneBenson]

Hi Sawer,

I'm no Clonezilla expert but I do use it. "disc to image" is just that. It backs up the entire disc, one partition at a time. So it will most likely start with "/" and then "/home", plus some more stuff. Each of these is kept in a separate file so should you ever need to do a restore you can chose to do the entire disc or just one partition.

You could make a separate partition to store the backups. It's really up to you. I just store them in a partition, on a second HDD, which already existed when I installed LMDE. It is an NTFS partition, which tells you something of where I came from. If you do decide to create a separate partition, just make sure it's one of the types that Clonezilla supports (which is really stating the obvious).

[Sawer]

I'm getting an syntax error message when it tries to clone /home works fine for /. there isn't any more info. I see googling that this is a somewhat common error. Any ideas?

[oobetimer]

I'm getting an syntax error message when it tries to clone /home works fine for /. there isn't any more info. I see googling that this is a somewhat common error. Any ideas?

Remastersys is easy ..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remastersys

[Sawer]

Remastersys doesn't work with ext 4 or Debian squeeze. This from The Remastersys forum according to the dev.

[twa]

True that Remastersys for Debian doesn't work on LMDE . Always used Remastersys with ext 4 since Mint7-8- and now 9 LTS...always backed-up my sys without any problem...but these r ubuntu based distros.
regards 2 u all

[rijnsma]

Here is all you want to know about Clonezilla.
http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~spescha/wiki/til/backup_howto

!! Read and see certainly the 'restore-part' of this howto !!

[-When you have for instance a mixed multiboot system with ext3/Grub1 and ext4/Grub2,
-one distro MBR/ext3/Grub1 for the booting (very nice: PCLOS, which has a 'redo-MBR-option' with
adaption of menu.lst),
-and the others pointing to their own root (ext3/Grub1 and/or ext4/Grub2) >>
Clonezilla must not write Grub in the MBR at the end. In expertmode of Clonezilla
you can configure that. So Clonezilla MBR-restore at the end is o.k. but no Grub-writing in this
special case. If this is not a problem (not multiboot) no problems but read it anyway. ]

When by accident you can't boot anymore use a Berlios Grub/Grub2 Hybrid bootcd
http://www.supergrubdisk.org/super-grub2-disk/
The cd boots the system or any partition also when the MBR is overwritten, then repair the MBR
with a redo MBR. (Or do it the Grub-way, which is less easy).

(It's a pity there is not a simple remaster-tool to back up LMDE. Live Magic does not work
right here.) But Clonezilla can do the job.