How to clone Linux hard drive to smaller flash drive

AndreasKralj · 06-21-2019, 02:59 PM

Currently, I'm trying to clone a hard drive that has Linux installed to a 16GB flash drive. The hard drive is 233GB, but df -h shows that only 3.5G is in use. Can I use clonezilla to create an image using just the allocated amount of space and copy it to a flash drive, where I can deploy the image to other Linux laptops?

Ztcoracat · 06-21-2019, 03:30 PM

Hi & Welcome to LQ.

I've never used Conezilla so I'm not sure if you can create an image using just that amount of space.
If I had to guess I would imagine you could.

When you have time read the Clonezilla documentation. It should help clarify what you need.

https://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live-doc.php

AndreasKralj · 06-21-2019, 04:44 PM

Yeah. I'm using Parted Magic so I'm using Clonezilla from there. I tried doing device-image and it gets part of the way done, then throws the error

split /home/partimag/lubuntu.img/lubuntu-vg-root.ext4.ptcl-img.gz.aa: Input/output error
Checking the disk space...
Failed to save partition /dev/lubuntu-vg/root.
Press Enter to continue

syg00 · 06-21-2019, 05:57 PM

No.
Go to their front page and look under "Limitations".

That's why people document things.

fatmac · 06-22-2019, 04:56 AM

Some distros, such as antiX & MX Linux, come with the ability to do that, they call it a 'snapshot' (of your present system), & can create a bootable version to put onto a pendrive/SDHC card, for installing to other machines.

linus72 · 06-22-2019, 08:22 AM

What linux distro are you running that you want cloned?

verndog · 06-22-2019, 09:24 AM

fsarchiver will do just that. It clones only used sectors.
And you can restore to smaller partition as long as the data fits.

catatom · 06-28-2019, 08:53 AM

I too only remember failing at this. I also failed at creating a USB key with a cryptsetup encrypted harddrive.

You can dd a partition, but you'll have to shrink it first. I don't know why it did not work to (A) make a Ubuntu Live pendrive (B) delete the main partition (C) shrink my harddrive's main partition, and (D) dd the shrunken partition onto a bootable USB drive. If it worked, I would remember it.

dc.901 · 06-28-2019, 09:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndreasKralj

Currently, I'm trying to clone a hard drive that has Linux installed to a 16GB flash drive. The hard drive is 233GB, but df -h shows that only 3.5G is in use. Can I use clonezilla to create an image using just the allocated amount of space and copy it to a flash drive, where I can deploy the image to other Linux laptops?

What filesystem type??
You could use dump/restore (or xfsdump/xfsrestore). man pages of these commands have good examples.