Error when restoring an image with ntfsclone

nonoitall · 02-24-2008, 03:30 PM

Earlier this week I cloned a partition using the following command:

Code:

ntfsclone -o - /dev/sda1 | gzip -c > backup.img.gz

Everything went fine and today I wanted to restore the image, so I tried the following:

Code:

gzip -cd backup.img.gz | ntfsclone --overwrite /dev/sda2 -

But I received an error saying:

Code:

ERROR(2): Failed to check '-' mount state: No such file or directory

I managed to restore the image using dd, but obviously the process went less efficiently than it could have if only used portions of the file system had been restored. I know I must be missing something really obvious here, so if one of you guys could point it out to me I'd be eternally grateful. Thanks in advance!

homey · 02-24-2008, 03:51 PM

I don't have a windows box handy to try it with but, I do see a couple of differences with your code and my notes.

Code:

Save an NTFS into a compressed image file:

    ntfsclone --save-image -o - /dev/sda1 | gzip -c > backup.img.gz

Restore an NTFS volume from a compressed image file:

    gunzip -c backup.img.gz | \
    ntfsclone --restore-image --overwrite /dev/sda1 -

nonoitall · 02-24-2008, 05:32 PM

According to the ntfsclone documentation, the --save-image and --restore-image switches are for using ntfsclone's special image format (that uses escape codes to mark unused areas, rather than filling them in with zeros or garbage like a standard image). I still wanted the image to be usable with other utilities such as dd and mount, so when I created it I omitted the --save-image option to just get a 'normal' image - and the process worked.

I assumed that ntfsclone could also restore a normal image, but I haven't had any luck getting that to work. If I use --restore-image it complains about it not being the right kind of file or something to that effect (I can check and post a precise error message if need be) which doesn't surprise me since the image isn't in ntfsclone's special format. Can ntfsclone not restore standard images from stdin?