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    #1

    My 'bare metal' backup solution

    If you look, you'll find one or more posts here in KFN where I inquired as to opinions of backup solutions. Well, today, I've settled on the solution that I am very satisfied with.

    I came back to Clonezilla today, and downloaded the latest LiveCD .iso (1.2.6-40). I have a Seagate Passport 500GB USB HD. Clonezilla does a drive-to-drive 'clone' and works with ext4 and Grub2. I selected my internal 120GB HD as the 'source' and the Seagate Passport 500GB USB HD as the 'target.' Worked like a champ. When it finished, I rebooted and selected the Seagate Passport 500GB HD as the boot device to 'test' the resulting clone. Works perfectly!

    Removed the other utilities I had been using - Lucky Backup and Remastersys - as I'll stick with Clonezilla. So much easier to make a clone of my entire HD.
    Windows no longer obstructs my view.
    Using Kubuntu Linux since March 23, 2007.
    "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." - Sherlock Holmes​
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    #2
    Re: My 'bare metal' backup solution

    Going between different sized drives is cool.

    woodsmoke
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      #3
      Re: My 'bare metal' backup solution

      I have not used Clonzilla, but I am looking for a drive imaging program that will back up a NTFS drive to another different sized (larger) drive and include a True Crypt volume on that drive. Will Clonezilla do that?
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        #4
        Re: My 'bare metal' backup solution

        See Clonezilla
        Windows no longer obstructs my view.
        Using Kubuntu Linux since March 23, 2007.
        "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." - Sherlock Holmes​
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          #5
          Re: My 'bare metal' backup solution

          I browsed the web site, and did not really get a clear answer to my question. I am not wanting to create an image of an encrypted drive, but want to create an image of a NTFS drive the at has a True Crypt volume on it. One way to get an answer, try it and see what happens, which is my next step.
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            #6
            Re: My 'bare metal' backup solution

            Originally posted by Snowhog
            If you look, you'll find one or more posts here in KFN where I inquired as to opinions of backup solutions. Well, today, I've settled on the solution that I am very satisfied with.

            I came back to Clonezilla today, and downloaded the latest LiveCD .iso (1.2.6-40). I have a Seagate Passport 500GB USB HD. Clonezilla does a drive-to-drive 'clone' and works with ext4 and Grub2. I selected my internal 120GB HD as the 'source' and the Seagate Passport 500GB USB HD as the 'target.' Worked like a champ. When it finished, I rebooted and selected the Seagate Passport 500GB HD as the boot device to 'test' the resulting clone. Works perfectly!

            Removed the other utilities I had been using - Lucky Backup and Remastersys - as I'll stick with Clonezilla. So much easier to make a clone of my entire HD.
            out of curiosity did Clonezilla make a 120GB partition on the 500GB drive...... rewrite the 500GB drive to 120GB ........or what.

            just wanted to know the specifics of just what Clonezilla did to the 500GB drive? and was it already partitioned or bare .

            VINNY
            i7 4core HT 8MB L3 2.9GHz
            16GB RAM
            Nvidia GTX 860M 4GB RAM 1152 cuda cores
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              #7
              Re: My 'bare metal' backup solution

              Originally posted by vinnywright
              out of curiosity did Clonezilla make a 120GB partition on the 500GB drive...... rewrite the 500GB drive to 120GB ........or what.
              My 500GB USB HD was already formatted as ext4. It had prior 'backup' folders on it from Lucky Backup, which I didn't care about. Clonezilla destroyed that data (warned me it would - do I really want to do that - Yes) and proceded to 'clone' my 120GB HD to it. Here are the results (sudo fdisk -l):
              Code:
              Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc528b3c5

  Device Boot   Start     End   Blocks  Id System
/dev/sda1  *      1    1305  10482381  83 Linux
/dev/sda2      1306    9397  64998928  f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5      1306    4568  26209984+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6      4569    4829   2096451  82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7      4830    6134  10482381  83 Linux
/dev/sda8      6135    9397  26210016  83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107861504 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc528b3c5

  Device Boot   Start     End   Blocks  Id System
/dev/sdc1  *      1    1305  10482381  83 Linux
/dev/sdc2      1306    9397  64998928  f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdc5      1306    4568  26209984+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdc6      4569    4829   2096451  82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdc7      4830    6134  10482381  83 Linux
/dev/sdc8      6135    9397  26210016  83 Linux
              Windows no longer obstructs my view.
              Using Kubuntu Linux since March 23, 2007.
              "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." - Sherlock Holmes​
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                #8
                Re: My 'bare metal' backup solution

                OK so all the partitions (including MBR )of the 120Gb drive are on the 500GB drive I get that..... but what is left of the 500GB drive .........is thare 380GB of unalocated space for more partitions or 380GB of ext4 partition? or is the rest now unusabel.

                VINNY

                i7 4core HT 8MB L3 2.9GHz
                16GB RAM
                Nvidia GTX 860M 4GB RAM 1152 cuda cores
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                  #9
                  Re: My 'bare metal' backup solution

                  As I opted to 'clone' my 120GB HD to the 500GB HD and it had only one partition, it is now a 'cloned' 120GB HD. The remaining 380GB 'unallocated' space is not useable if the HD is connected to my running Maverick. I knew that would be the case, so wasn't concerned - I wanted a working 'clone' of my main HD.

                  That said, yes, that's a waste of a very large HD for use as a clone to a much smaller one. I'm going to play around a bit still with Clonezilla. Now that I know I can get a working clone of my main HD, I'll see about creating backups of my 120GB partitions to the 500GB HD instead. If I create backup partitions instead, then I believe I can access everything on the 500GB HD when connected to my running Maverick. Likely I'll have to use GParted to reformat the HD first. But, hey, that's what 'testing' is all about - discovery!
                  Windows no longer obstructs my view.
                  Using Kubuntu Linux since March 23, 2007.
                  "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." - Sherlock Holmes​
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                    #10
                    Re: My 'bare metal' backup solution

                    Snowhog if you didn't need to run the clone, and just wanted a backup image of your OS, then it doesn't care about the size of the partition that you save it on. Maybe you knew that ...
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                      #11
                      Re: My 'bare metal' backup solution

                      Originally posted by Snowhog
                      As I opted to 'clone' my 120GB HD to the 500GB HD and it had only one partition, it is now a 'cloned' 120GB HD. The remaining 380GB 'unallocated' space is not useable if the HD is connected to my running Maverick. I knew that would be the case, so wasn't concerned - I wanted a working 'clone' of my main HD.
                      OK thats what I thought 8)

                      IF you had a clone of 1 on 2 and 2 being larger than 1 with USABLE space on 2 left after the clone space I was going to ask for the code

                      VINNY

                      i7 4core HT 8MB L3 2.9GHz
                      16GB RAM
                      Nvidia GTX 860M 4GB RAM 1152 cuda cores
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                        #12
                        Re: My 'bare metal' backup solution

                        Ideally, what I want, is a 'full-system' backup of my OS - one that can be used to 'restore from' to my HD in the case the OS gets trashed (not likely here - I'm VERY careful). That's why I opted for a clone. I concidered creating a LiveCD of my system, and I can still try that, but it requires a DVD, as the resultant .iso is 1.3GB. My laptop has a CD/DVD reader/writer drive; I just need to purchase some DVD r/w discs.
                        Windows no longer obstructs my view.
                        Using Kubuntu Linux since March 23, 2007.
                        "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." - Sherlock Holmes​
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                          #13
                          Re: My 'bare metal' backup solution

                          Update:

                          1. Booted into GParted (0.3.9-13) and reformatted the 500GB HD:
                          Created an extended partition using the entire HD
                          Created three logical 120GB ext3 partitions
                          Created a logical 105.8GB ext (remaining space)
                          2. Booted into Clonezilla (1.2.6-40)
                          3. Created 'images' of the partitions on my internal HD, saving them to the first 120GB partition on my 500GB HD.
                          4. Rebooted into Maverick and converted the ext3 filesystems on the 500GB HD to ext4.

                          My 'backed up' internal HD partitions data on the first logical 120GB partition on the 500GB HD:
                          Code:
                          paul@myotherbrain:/media/disk/2011-01-01-21-img$ ls -la
total 7128616
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    4096 2011-01-01 13:03 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root    4096 2011-01-01 13:03 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     4 2011-01-01 13:03 disk
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    7881 2011-01-01 13:03 Info-dmi.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   21200 2011-01-01 13:03 Info-lshw.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    2921 2011-01-01 13:03 Info-lspci.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    260 2011-01-01 13:03 Info-packages.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     20 2011-01-01 13:03 parts
-rw------- 1 root root 1082355782 2011-01-01 12:53 sda1.ext4-ptcl-img.gz.aa
-rw------- 1 root root 2097152000 2011-01-01 12:56 sda5.ext4-ptcl-img.gz.aa
-rw------- 1 root root 1832425316 2011-01-01 12:59 sda5.ext4-ptcl-img.gz.ab
-rw------- 1 root root 1036480069 2011-01-01 13:01 sda7.ext4-ptcl-img.gz.aa
-rw------- 1 root root 1244020190 2011-01-01 13:03 sda8.ext4-ptcl-img.gz.aa
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     37 2011-01-01 12:50 sda-chs.sf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   31744 2011-01-01 12:50 sda-hidden-data-after-mbr
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    512 2011-01-01 12:50 sda-mbr
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    592 2011-01-01 12:50 sda-pt.parted
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    463 2011-01-01 12:50 sda-pt.sf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     53 2011-01-01 13:03 swappt-sda6.info
paul@myotherbrain:/media/disk/2011-01-01-21-img$
                          The beauty of doing it this way, is that all the partitions on the 500GB HD are accessible within my running OS when connected.

                          There is a drawback to doing it this way, at least initially, and that is I can't 'test' that the created backup images will properly 'restore' to the internal HD, as that requires actually restoring from the images. IF it should fail I have trashed my working OS. However, knowing that a clone of my internal HD with Clonezilla does work, I can copy over the files above to another USB HD and make another clone to the 500GB HD. I can then test restoration of the image files on the other USB HD. If it works I know all is good. If it fails I have a clone to restore from and that is known to work.

                          But for now I'm satisfied. And in fact I have no reason to think that the restore from the images files won't work.
                          Windows no longer obstructs my view.
                          Using Kubuntu Linux since March 23, 2007.
                          "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." - Sherlock Holmes​
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