If you are cloning hard drives, you could also just go from drive to drive:
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Browse All TopicsDear all,
I want to backup an entire hard-drive with multiple partitions with multiple OS installed. Corrently there are a Service partition(FAT32), a Window Vista (2 ntfs partitions) and a Linux (an ext3 and a swap partition) on the hard drive. The boot selector is GRUB.
My question is: which tool can do the backup / restore job for such an entire hard drive without losing any partiton infomation? (Acronis True Image Home 2009 doesn't work for 256k I-node)
Thanks for any help.
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Check out Clonezilla Live:
http://clonezilla.org/clon
Before you perform the operation, make sure the Master Boot Record (MBR) is included.
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by: chingmdPosted on 2008-11-14 at 15:23:52ID: 22964613
Check out a Live Boot CD for Linux like knoppix or Ubuntu
Using the dd command:
dd if=/dev/DEVICENODE of=/PATH/TO/SAVE/FILE
You will need to have a drive that can handle that much data though.
This is a bit per bit image, so it'll take a long time and may not look like it's doing anything.
If you are just mirroring the drive to another drive of the same or larger drive size. you should be fine with this command.