[SOLVED] Clonezilla Strategy: Larger to Smaller HDD

ingyhere · 09-03-2010, 09:05 AM

Hello Linux Gurus,

I've schemed a plan to defeat Clonezilla's limitation of going from larger to smaller HDDs:

1) Create imageable disk;
2) Resize main partition to smallest possible using gparted (leave unused space on disk);
3) Image disk with Clonezilla;
4) Burn to smaller HDD that is larger than shrunken partitions.

Will this work? In other words, does Clonezilla rely on partition tables or physical drive geometry?

Peace Out,

IngyHere

lumak · 09-04-2010, 06:03 PM

gparted claims to do resizing without loosing data. In that case, then both the filesystem and the partition are resized and a new partition table is written. If Clonezilla does partition based backups, then you shouldn't have a problem. It would be a next to useless tool if it only did full harddrive backups.

syg00 · 09-04-2010, 06:59 PM

Agreed.
Clonezilla is a wrapper for several tools - partition backups appear to be (as hoped) partition based; and only the used portion which is even better.
I keep meaning to test it, but never have.

ingyhere · 09-12-2010, 01:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ingyhere

Hello Linux Gurus,

I've schemed a plan to defeat Clonezilla's limitation of going from larger to smaller HDDs ...

Tested and this works great. The key is shrinking partitions and re-enlarging them on deployed hard drives. Solved.

RickyRockRat · 12-08-2010, 06:52 AM

Clonezilla in any mode that has a supported file system, will only save data that is used. It does not store unused bytes. You can force it to, of course, but the normal operation is to just save what is used.

dd on the other hand will blindly copy everything.

dennislinux · 04-12-2011, 06:39 PM

Thank you.. this works flawlessly.

Simply resize linux partition with gpart and afterward use clonezilla's partion to partion.

Now why don't they put both into one single iso??

ethos101 · 09-04-2012, 05:25 PM

I just figured this one out and thought I'd post a helpful hint: gparted can do partition copying, so you don't need clonezilla to do this type of operation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dennislinux

Thank you.. this works flawlessly.

Simply resize linux partition with gpart and afterward use clonezilla's partion to partion.

Now why don't they put both into one single iso??