Ghosting a Linux Hard Drive?

[linuxnoobie]

what program can i use to ghost(clone) a linux hard drive.

I use norton ghost 2003 for windows hard drives

[devils casper]

PartImage !

[linuxnoobie]

It's a little confusing on what file i download?

is it Ext2fs the file i need or is it system rescue?

Maybe its partimage-0.6.5.tar.bz2 plus download the library filed needed to go along with this file?

[oz]

You can probably use the package manager that's in YAST to download it. If not, you can install the partimage package available here:

http://www.partimage.org/Download

... or you can use the SystemRescueCD that includes a copy of PartImage.

[saikee]

The dd command outperforms Norton Ghost because it is simpler, faster and easier to use.

Important rule first : The target must be at least same size, down to the exact number of sectors or simply larger than the source.

If you do not follow this rule you disk will have a partition table indicating a size large than the physical size, resulting it being treated as an outcast by all operating systems.

If the source is hda and the target is sda, say you hook it as a UB hard disk, there is only one line of terminal command of

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/sda bs=32768

The block size 32768 is 64 sector times 512 bytes per sector giving one complete track being cloned at a time. Omitting the bs parameter will cause dd to default to bs=512 bytes and this slows down the process considerably.

On my PC with AMD64 3200 the cloning speed is about 50 Mb/s between internal disks. Internal to external USb the throughput can drop to 40 t0 30% due to the bootle neck in the USB2 port.

The excess capacity in the hard disk after cloning can be absorbed into existing partitions by Gparted or Parted Magic.

dd produces a 100% exact clone of the original and target disk boots exactly like the source, regardless if you have Dos, Windows, Linux , BSD and Solaris inside.

When I migrate to a bigger disk I put away the source disk after cloning as a backup and start immediately using the target which can have 63 partitions and 400Gb large.

This thread is pretty authoratitive on the subject.

dd is a terminal command available in every Linux. You can use it to clone partitions selectively as well. dd differs from other backup program by copying only the "1" and "0" of the partition or hard disk. Thus by default it includes the boot sector making the target bootable if the source has a boot loader inside.

There has been reports that one can use "cat" instead of "dd" but I haven't tried it myself.

[linuxnoobie]

So are you saying i cant ghost the image to a DVD or CD disk?

What im looking for is a image of the linux hd that i can keep on a ccd or dvd in case the hd croaks. Will the dd command let me do that or do i need a usb device?

[saikee]

You can elect output as a file instead of a device partition.

dd doesn't do compression but you can use tar or other compression software on the image file.

With an image file you have to restore the saved image in a future day.

On a cloned partition or hard disk you can restore files selectively.

[devils casper]

i would suggest you to use Partimage only. download it from the Link that ozar has posted OR download System Rescue CD. it creates bootable images and has different compression options.





Casper

[hughitt1]

i've always been curious as to how useful (partimage, etc) is..it pretty much just makes an image of your hard-drive as it currently is set-up?

what is the process then to go about loading an image if you were to wipe your machine? is partimage itself bootable?

[devils casper]

yes, partimage creates bootable images. check its documentation.