Hard Drive cloning tool in linux

Any good floppy bootable IMG / Cloning utility in linux?


i have tried the software called :

G4L works good, but the images it makes are huge due to the fact that
it clones sectors and bits. eg. a 40 gig drive = 40 gig image!


Norton ghosts clones just the data, and it doesnt matter how big the
drive is. Eg. you can clone from a 40 gig to a 20 gig, as long as the
data fits there, it will work.

Anyone recommends any other alternative? One thing i like about g4l is
the ability to clone the drive, and write it across the network to a
ftp server.

Please advise!
thanks guys!

On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 21:20:11 GMT, EL CID <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Anyone recommends any other alternative? One thing i like about g4l is
>the ability to clone the drive, and write it across the network to a
>ftp server.

Standard CLI tools: zero the free space on source drive, then pipe
image through gzip, the free space goes to virtually nothing.

Need a recipe?

Assume clone /dev/hda1:

read:
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hd
dd if=/dev/zero bs=4k of=/mnt/hd/all_zeroes
rm /mnt/hd/all_zeroes
umount /dev/hda1
dd if=/dev/ha1 | gzip > /somewhere/else/dev_hda1_image.gz

write:
zcat /somewhere/else/dev_hda1_image.gz | dd of=/dev/hda1

You can make a floppy boot disk, but a rescue CD would be easier.

Why seek special applications when unix toolbox approach does the job?

In unix, all devices are files. No special tools required, that's
ms-dos thinko... ;o)

Grant.

EL CID <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

>Any good floppy bootable IMG / Cloning utility in linux?


>i have tried the software called :

>G4L works good, but the images it makes are huge due to the fact that
>it clones sectors and bits. eg. a 40 gig drive = 40 gig image!

A clone is exactly that. If you want a backup, use dump/restore, or tar, or
.....



>Norton ghosts clones just the data, and it doesnt matter how big the
>drive is. Eg. you can clone from a 40 gig to a 20 gig, as long as the
>data fits there, it will work.

So will tar or dump/restore, or rsync, or....


>Anyone recommends any other alternative? One thing i like about g4l is
>the ability to clone the drive, and write it across the network to a
>ftp server.

tar.

Thanks guys!!!



On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 21:20:11 GMT, EL CID <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Any good floppy bootable IMG / Cloning utility in linux?
>
>
>i have tried the software called :
>
>G4L works good, but the images it makes are huge due to the fact that
>it clones sectors and bits. eg. a 40 gig drive = 40 gig image!
>
>
>Norton ghosts clones just the data, and it doesnt matter how big the
>drive is. Eg. you can clone from a 40 gig to a 20 gig, as long as the
>data fits there, it will work.
>
>Anyone recommends any other alternative? One thing i like about g4l is
>the ability to clone the drive, and write it across the network to a
>ftp server.
>
>Please advise!
>thanks guys!

On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 21:20:11 +0000, EL CID wrote:

> Anyone recommends any other alternative? One thing i like about g4l is
> the ability to clone the drive, and write it across the network to a
> ftp server.

While definitely not a GUI way to do it, I've used rsync to transfer the
contents of one partition on one computer to a new partition on another
over the network. It will maintain permissions, symlinks, etc. I've done
it twice to upgrade laptops and my Debian installs went on just like they
had before.

I even used this trick to recover from a crashed hard drive that I could
mount Read Only under KNOPPIX and made a full recovery. I was fortunate
that the crash seemed to have occured in the swap partition.

- Nate >>

--

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds,
the pessimist fears this is true."