Getting Started with Linux backup: 3 ways to Clone _clonezilla

Excerpt from: http://os.51cto.com/art/201006/206871.htm

Making a mirrored copy of your system disk is a good way to create a backup. Since the portable USB stick always has a lower price, you can maintain several copies for recycling. If your primary disk crashes, you can recover back and continue running in a few minutes. So the only thing left is to actually create a mirrored copy of the operation. There are many ways to accomplish this task, and we will introduce several of them here so that you can learn.

Making a mirrored copy of a system disk the biggest problem is that you have to boot from another device to get a real copy. The first option is to have a live CD and a bootable USB flash drive. Where you are likely to save a copy of your favorite distribution installation disk is one of the most obvious choices. Here we will use the Ubuntu 10.04 release on the USB flash drive. The second option is to use a release version that is really used for disk replication, such as Clonezilla. This is probably the easiest way to do the job, especially if you're not used to the command line.

Option 1: Bootable ubuntu USB flash drive

If you've already run an Ubuntu, creating a bootable USB flash drive is just a piece of cake. But it's not very difficult to create if you don't have one. All you really need is the ISO file for this release. If you don't have any, you can download it at the Ubuntu site. There is an option on this download page to show you how to create a bootable USB flash drive under Mac OS X, Ubuntu, and Windows.

Once created, you can launch it directly with this USB stick. You may need to change your BIOS settings so that you can boot from a USB device. Many newer systems (such as Dell's machines) have an option to highlight the boot menu by pressing the F12 key when the power-on is activated. Once the system is up and ready, you can start making your image backup. You may want to run the disk Utility below the System/administration list. This gives you the opportunity to see all the disks connected to the system and their organizational structure.

Disk utility provides a number of tools, including mount/unload and format a volume. If you want to reuse an old Windows disk, it's a good idea to start from here and format the drive. GParted 0.5.1 is included in the standard Ubuntu 10.4 basic Startup Disk, which includes an option to copy the partition. Instructions for completing this work can be found at the GParted site or the Ubuntu forum. If you want, you can also use the GParted Live CD.

If you choose to back up your system to an external USB drive, you need to be ready to wait. In our case, the estimated time is about four hours. Using a hard drive cartridge adapter such as Thermaltake Blackx st0005u is a good choice. It has a eSATA connector that can greatly speed up data transfer processing. If you're frustrated with someone who is constantly tossing or beginning something new The system, then this thing is a necessity.

GParted

Disk Utility

Select 2:clonezilla

Clonezilla is a Linux distribution dedicated to cloning disk drives. It can manipulate any file system type you can imagine. There are two versions of Clonezilla: Live and SE. The live version has almost the same usage as the Ubuntu Live USB drive. You start your computer with a live USB flash drive, and then you can perform various copy operations on any disk that is connected to your computer. Clonezilla provides a variety of tools that can be organized with a simple menu system to provide helpful guidance for operations. The default partition Copy tool is Partclone. The SE version of Clonezilla (server Edition) means it can be used to clone disks on the network.

The latest version of Clonezilla is 1.2.5.17, based on Debian or Ubuntu. Now you can also download the AMD64 version, support all 64-bit applications, and mirror larger partitions. All applications are updated to the latest version, with the kernel using 2.6.32-12. The hardest part of using Clonezilla for hard disk mirroring is to figure out which one is the primary drive and which one is used for copying. Clonezilla is very careful when copying the master boot record (MBR), while doing the same work with Ubuntu Live CD requires some magic on the command line.

Select 3:dd

If you are a command-line control, you can use the DD command to accomplish these things. The command to mirror a drive with DD is similar to this:

# dd IF=/DEV/SDA OF=/DEV/SDB

This assumes that/DEV/SDA is the drive you want to copy and/dev/sdb is the target drive. You will find that the speed of this method is the same as the GParted method mentioned in option 1 above. It really doesn't matter what you choose, but the important thing is that you do some kind of system backup. Computers are always prone to mistakes, and backups are the way you can afford to spend the least amount of time. Throw your sorrow aside now and back up your system. Go on, we're waiting for you.

Clonezilla

Clonezilla boot Menu

http://www.linuxdiyf.com/viewarticle.php?id=274947

http://forum.ubuntu.org.cn/viewtopic.php?p=2643583