Linux Mint Forums

I dual boot windows 7 and I may need to do a restore on it. Windows 7's backup thing will (because they are stupid) overwrite any area of memory that it does not back up (even though as far as it knows there is nothing there it should not write to it). I want to make a disk image of mint so that I don't have to reinstall everything (don't want to waste the bw and I think it will take less time because I won't need to redo all my settings).

Help would be greatly appreciated

Have you tried Clonezilla Live 1.2.5-17 Works great for Disc Imaging

Thank you for the quick response. Can it create it in a folder or only on a partition? I have a hard drive that I don't want to partition, but I want the backup image to be in /LinuxBackup

Also will it allow compression? My drive won't hold the whole thing, but it will hold what I used.

An option I see frequently mentioned for making an image of an installed system is Remastersys. See this thread for more info.

This will do everything that you specified. I recommend running it from the System Rescue CD.

http://www.fsarchiver.org/Main_Page.

As an added bonus, it will also make images of the NTFS partitions (I'm currently backing up my wife's messy XP ... ).

-DataMan

nolag wrote:Thank you for the quick response. Can it create it in a folder or only on a partition? I have a hard drive that I don't want to partition, but I want the backup image to be in /LinuxBackup

Also will it allow compression? My drive won't hold the whole thing, but it will hold what I used.

Clonezilla is great, and it does either your entire hard drive or selected partitions. Also, it only stores the used blocks to the image, thus making the resulting image file(s) smaller than the source. Stores everything in a directory of your making.

Joe

JoeFootball wrote:

nolag wrote:Thank you for the quick response. Can it create it in a folder or only on a partition? I have a hard drive that I don't want to partition, but I want the backup image to be in /LinuxBackup

Also will it allow compression? My drive won't hold the whole thing, but it will hold what I used.

Clonezilla is great, and it does either your entire hard drive or selected partitions. Also, it only stores the used blocks to the image, thus making the resulting image file(s) smaller than the source. Stores everything in a directory of your making.

Joe

Thank you all for your responses, @Joe so if I have my mint partition and I want to back it up /ExternalDrive/LinuxBackup how would I do that with clonezilla? This seems like the ideal solution, but last time I used clonezilla (on vmware) I ended up deleting everything else on the backup partition (virtual) drive.

Looking forward to your response

nolag wrote:@Joe so if I have my mint partition and I want to back it up /ExternalDrive/LinuxBackup how would I do that with clonezilla?

I've personally never made images of selected partitions, as I always tell Clonezilla to make an image of the entire drive, but I do know that it asks if I want to do selected partitions or the whole drive, so I assume if you go with that first option, it will then ask which partition(s) you want to make images of. Like you, I put the image in a directory of other images that I have on an external drive.

nolag wrote:...last time I used clonezilla (on vmware) I ended up deleting everything else on the backup partition (virtual) drive.

I also don't have any experience using Clonezilla in any sort of virtualization. I just download the ISO, make a CD from it, reboot the PC, and follow the instructions. A text-based interface, but it certainly does the job, and the only challenge is reading the Taiwanese-to-English translation, which really isn't that bad.

Joe

JoeFootball wrote:

nolag wrote:@Joe so if I have my mint partition and I want to back it up /ExternalDrive/LinuxBackup how would I do that with clonezilla?

I've personally never made images of selected partitions, as I always tell Clonezilla to make an image of the entire drive, but I do know that it asks if I want to do selected partitions or the whole drive, so I assume if you go with that first option, it will then ask which partition(s) you want to make images of. Like you, I put the image in a directory of other images that I have on an external drive.

nolag wrote:...last time I used clonezilla (on vmware) I ended up deleting everything else on the backup partition (virtual) drive.

I also don't have any experience using Clonezilla in any sort of virtualization. I just download the ISO, make a CD from it, reboot the PC, and follow the instructions. A text-based interface, but it certainly does the job, and the only challenge is reading the Taiwanese-to-English translation, which really isn't that bad.

Joe

Thanks I'll give it a try at some point later and post my results