how to clone a linux partition (like norton ghost)

d.kumar · 02-04-2008, 10:38 PM

Hi everyone

is there any package is available which can be used to clone/image a hard disk partition having linux filesystem

thanks

gilead · 02-04-2008, 10:46 PM

Have you had a look at partimage? From the home page:

Code:

Description: Partimage is a Linux utility which saves 
partitions having a supported filesystem to an image file. 
Most Linux and Windows filesystems are supported. The image 
file can be compressed with the gzip / bzip2 programs to save 
disk space, and they can be splitted into multiple files to 
be copied on CDs / DVDs, ... Partitions can also be saved 
across the network since version 0.6.0 using the partimage 
network support, or using Samba / NFS.

taylorkh · 02-05-2008, 08:23 AM

Hi d.kumar,

Norton Ghost will work for _some_ Linux partitions. The product I have use is g4l (Ghost for Linux) available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l It is basically a menu driven front end for partimage. You simply download the g4l image, burn to CD and you have a bootable CD. Boot from the CD and g4l <Enter> brings up the app. Select the destination where you want to write the image then select the partition to be processed. g4l uses partimage to make the image and has a couple of compression options.

That said, there are a few potential issues:

Fedora (starting with Core 4 or 5) uses a logical volume (LVM) approach to formatting the hard drive. I have not found ANY application which will image such a hard drive.

If you install Fedora without LVM it still formats the hard drive with resizable partitions. These also cannot be imaged in my experience. The trick is to manually partition the hard drive then format the partitions thusly:

mkfs.ext3 -L /boot /dev/sda1 -O ^resize_inode

This makes plain old etx3 partitions which can be imaged. You then need to install Fedora into the existing partitions without formatting during the install. You can then image the partitions with g4l from now on.

Ubuntu - I "discovered" it a while back and I must say it is a distro which I actually enjoy using day to day. However, it uses UUIDs to identify partitions. The UUID is a supposedly unique number/letter string created when the partition is created (or formatted, not sure). g4l will image and restore these partitions OK. However, if you need to restore a whole system to a new hard drive it is necessary to edit the /etc/fstab on the restored system to contain the proper UUID for the swap partition. The g4l restored partitions will have their original UUIDs.

That is the summation with my experience with imaging Linux partitions.

Regards,

Ken

shadowsnipes · 02-05-2008, 09:17 AM

You also might want to look at Clonezilla LiveCD. Here is a link to a liveCD that includes that called the Clonezilla-SysRescCD.

dtmbmw325i · 02-05-2008, 06:53 PM

I was trying to clone a drive last night and found the clonezilla cd hard to use. It was clonezilla and gparted. I dont know if I was too dumb to use it or what. The Partimage was a piece of cake although didnt work for me. My partition was not linux.

d.kumar · 02-28-2008, 08:41 AM

Hi All members

Thank you very much for reply and valuable links.

Very very thanks