A better Clonezilla

[Frank Golden]

As some of you may know I've been using Clonezilla for a few months as my primary backup (imaging program).Clonezilla replaced the Partimage I had been using for years.It is much more flexible.The version I originally began using was Clonezilla-live1.2.3-27.Because most live programs work much quicker when installed and run from a USB flash drive thatis what I've been using.The old version worked great and I never thought to check for updates.Recently while offering my 2 cents on a question posted at another forum about what imager to use Ichecked the Clonezilla website.I was surprised to see that there had been several updates since I installed that older version.They developer folks have been busy indeed.The latest stable release's areClonezilla-live-1.2-5-17-i686.isoClonezilla-live 1.2.5-17-i486.isoClonezilla-live 1.2.5-17-amd64.iso.zip versions of the above are available as well as Ubuntu based versions.The version that got my attention was the i686 version, optimized for multi-core processors.The standard versions are based on Debian Sid and utilize the 2.6.32-12 kernel.I quickly D\L the i686 .iso and installed it on my 2 GB Micro flash drive.I used the Windows version of Unetbootin 442 (unetbootin is another very useful tool that appears to be under furious development) to install the .iso on my Flash drive.http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ (now at version 471).Another tool (for Windows only) from sourceforge to create live USB's of a whole bunch of Linx distros is "Universal-USB-installer" now at v1.6.5. http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb...-easy-as-1-2-3/Since the latest version of clonezilla in the Unetbootin distribution is a very old one I just ignored the dropdown entirely and selected the diskimage radio button and browsed to my D\L'd .iso and clicked OK.A couple of minutes the Flash drive was ready.Booting to the drive and to the GUI was very quick, much quicker than the earlier version.There is a point in the boot process when Clonezilla searches your drive for all the partitions.With the old version this took a couple of minutes to locate 9 partitions, with the new version it was more like 15 seconds.Creating an image was also much faster.The old program would create the image at no faster than 800 MB\minthe new version managed 2000 MB\min.The developers also added some interesting compression options.Still being tested (marked testing) are dual core options of the old compression schemes.Apparently choosing these options makes best use of dual core processors.The default produces an image about half the size of the used space of your partition(s).Example: my 24 GB Win 7 partition (11 GB used space) ends up being 5.4 GB.I'd be willing to bet these improvements are responsible for the quicker times.Restoring images is quicker as well especially if the media that the image is stored on is a Flash drive as well.Average restore time from an image stored on another partition of the same HDD is around 1600 MB\min.Restore from a Flash device boosts that to about 2000 MB\min.The UI is much the same as older versions but the program beneath it is much improved.A great tool made much better.A slight learning curve but intuitive and once learned a must have backup tool.http://clonezilla.org/Hooray for open source.P.S. Parted Magic is now at v4.11http://partedmagic.com/download.htmlThis tool can be installed on a Flash drive as well.If you use the above mentioned Universal-USB-Installer (in Windows) and D\L the pmagic-usb-4.11.zipit is incredibly easy to create a Parted Magic-Live USB flash.Everything is automated.Besides being a full Live OS Parted Magic includes gparted as the partition manager and comes with Chrome as a browser.Establishing an internet connection is a snap with the desktop shortcut for that purpose.Lots of other apps are included as well.

Edited June 16, 2010 by Frank Golden

[amenditman]

Thanks for the update, Frank.I use Parted Magic for everything and support Patrick's development. A little PayPal money every now and then to your favorite open source applications is a simple way to help keep these tools available and improving.Great tips on using them from USB.

[Frank Golden]

A little PayPal money every now and then to your favorite open source applications is a simple way to help keep these tools available and improving.

Amen to that!

[securitybreach]

Thanks for the info Frank.

[cybrmat]

Frank, excellent info. I use Clonezilla on a DRBL (Diskless Remote Boot in Linux) server and it works great. I boot PC's running windows XP, 7, 2008 and Linux over the network and image them right to the server. I re-image machines back over the network as well. Until the most recent version of ghost came out it was the only thing you could use to image and restore a Windows 7 or 2008 image nothing else could restore the boot partition. It works equally well booting from a USB stick and running Clonzilla to image a PC to an external USB drive. We use it this way if a system has an odd network card that the DRBL server cannot identify.