Image a Linux drive?
 

Hello to all.

I'm wondering what the best (read: easiest and cheapest) software/methodology exists to clone a linux-based hard drive in its' entirety. At work, we have a linux hard drive that is failing and want to image it onto a new hard drive. I know zippo about linux. What I'm hoping for is to remove and slave the linux drive onto another pc and use something windows-based.

I've done some checking on this already, and numerous references to Clonezilla keep popping up. Is there anything else out there?

Many thanks.

Yes, Acronis. Click on free trial.
Backup software for data backup and recovery | Acronis

Interestingly, I found an Acronis version for Western Digital drives. I don't know if it only works with WD drives but it seems to be truly free and not limited to a 30 day trial. I could not find such a limitation in the User's Guide PDF.
http://support.wdc.com/product/downl...l.asp?swid=119

The only possible way to clone a Linux drive with an Acronis product might be with boot media - it ain't happening in Windows. You would be much better off using something designed for Linux. Clonezilla on a bootable CD or flash drive would probably be the best way.

That's what I was thinking. Boot disk or boot from flash drive only. Acronis not written for Linux that I know of. And to do a clone you have to do a boot disk or flash...right? There is no other choice?

Correct. You cannot clone or image a Linux drive if it's mounted by the OS.

Thanks guys.

Ya I slaved the linux drive yesterday and used Acronis. As GLC stated, the drive wasn't accessible/viewable. Too bad 'cause Acronis is my go-to software whenever I clone drives and it never lets me down :(

I'll build a linux usb stick and see if I can figure out Clonezilla.

The command line is always an option to. :cool:

It might take a little reading up on the dd command, but it should do the trick. Just be sure you know what your source drive is and what your destination drive is.

Linux (any distro) HowTo: Clone disks via the command line with dd.


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Preston is right on the mark. His link is the perfect and easiest solution.

Thanks Preston and Jdeb. I'm going to have a crack at the dd command stuff. I read over the two links provided, and the task seems relatively straightforward. One question I have is will hidden files and stuff be copied too?

'dd' makes a bit for bit copy of the drive.

Here is a nice video: Copy One Drive to Another Using the dd Command in Linux.

I haven't used this one, but it may be another option for you: PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost).


Wilders Security Forum: PING (Have You Ever Used It?


I really don't know anything about it though...


(Now that you've read up on 'dd', I throw something new at you! :o)

The dd command works fine if you don't encounter any bad blocks. If you do have any bad blocks, dd will stop and hang when it encounters them. Since you say your hard drive may be failing, dd might not work. For those situations you are better off using the ddrescue command:

ddrescue - Gentoo Wiki

You can find most, if not all of the utilities mentioned in this thread(dd, ddrescue, partimage, clonezilla) on a linux livecd/liveusb called Parted Magic:

programs ? Parted Magic

Both partimage and clonezilla use the dd command under the hood to do their work IIRC, so once again, you might get aborts or system hangs if they encounter bad blocks. Clonezilla is the most widely used application for cloning an entire hard drive. I'd try that first and if you run into problems, go to ddrescue.

Update: Done Succesfully!!!!!!!!

First off, thanks guys for all the info contained above. I used all of it at some point or another and the links were invaluable.

I spent much of today trying to get this task done. Ultimately, what worked was using the dd "clone disk" command. I was really apprehensive about doing command line stuff with linux, so I tried Clonezilla first.

Clonezilla seemed to work well for most of the cloning, but near the end where it tries to find/write the GRUB info, certain files weren't found. The cloned disk wouldn't boot. I tried to repair the GRUB data but that didn't work out too well. I went through it a few times and got the same errors/result, so I jumped into dd commands.

dd cloning took wayyyyy longer than Clonezilla did. When it finished I tried to boot with the cloned drive and it worked like a charm! I'm very pleased that all the time invested paid off.

I decided that I want to tinker more with Linux, and I happen to have a brand new pc just begging to be used. So I bought an SSD for it and set-up a dual-boot with Win8, though getting it to actually dual-boot was another fun Linux-learning lesson for me.

All-in-all, a great day of Linux dabbling and learning. Wouldn't trade it for anything.

One little glitch I have run into using dd to clone a drive is, if both drives are to be used in the same computer they will both have the same UUID which causes problems with mounting.

You can fix this with the tune2fs command.
That will change the UUID of the disk to new randomly generated UUID.

I have edited the above code to indicate you would actually need to change the UUID of each partition on the drive where Xy is the drive and partition to change. Senior moment.

Thx Detonate. The imaged drive has been removed from duty so the UUID conflict has been avoided.