Clonezilla: Free Mass Disk-Cloning Utility - Clonezilla Live
(Page 2 of 4 )
Before we begin with Clonezilla Live, we should point out the general specifications and list of features that apply to both editions of Clonezilla. First of all, they are GPL licensed. The list of supported file systems is extensive: ext2, ext3, reiserfs, xfs, jfs, FAT16/32, NTFS, and any other unsupported file system too. The ones that aren't in the list are cloned on a sector-to-sector basis, meaning identical copies are made.
But chances are that your file system is within the aforementioned list. In that case, only used blocks are saved (cloned) and recovered later. This way the size of the image is decreased by far and the speed of operation is increased. Clonezilla Live only sports unicast, since it is targeted to single computer cloning from CDs, DVDs, USB flash drives, and such. You can boot up, and just restore the cloned images!
You can grab yourself the latest copy of Clonezilla Live by visiting the official source code repository and packages at Sourceforge-here is the direct link. Now let's assume you've already burned the bootable image onto a DVD/CD, and boot up your rig with it. The following screen will welcome you as soon as the boot process starts.
There are various options to choose from. The memtest86+ one is particularly useful when you are troubleshooting a computer and memory problems may exist. But let's not drift off topic. Continuing on, after picking Clonezilla live, it loads up, and you are asked which of two modes should be started. The first mode is Device-Image, meaning disk (or partition) to or from an image. This option works with images!
The second option is disk to disk or partition to partition. This option does 1:1 identical cloning from a source partition or disk to a target partition or disk. It's quite simple. Now we'd want to choose the first option, let's say, because we want to create an image of our operating system along with the data on it, so that in case of a crisis, we can restore everything without any hassles whatsoever.
Right after this step, another screen pops up asking us where the image should be stored. If we want to restore, then obviously this question refers to the source of the image, meaning where it can be located. But in our case, since we want to create the clone of the partition, we're picking the target destination.
As you can see, there are various options to choose from, for example: local_dev means the local device (i.e.; current hard-drive/partition). You can use remote target destinations too: SSH, Samba, and NFS servers. We've used the Samba one and it works seamlessly. In that case, you are asked for the domain admin access rights (user/pass) and to choose the destination folder (which is presumably shared on the server). But for now, we'll pick local_dev and enter the path.
Obviously, it also needs to know what to do. The possible modes are savedisk, restoredisk, saveparts, and restoreparts. Practically, there are only two possibilities, either saving or restoring. But each of them is once for disks and then for partitions. We want to create the image of an entire disk so we'll pick the first option. Should we want to work from a partition instead, then we'd pick the third one.
The cloning process isn't fancy at all. It just works. Systems administrators usually like to stay put and closely follow the information being reported on the console terminal, since each task is verbosely logged. But we know that sysadmins prefer anything that flickers on a black screen (especially if it's a *NIX terminal). Jokes aside, the process is interactive and it should ask for confirmation once again (Are you sure?).
If there are any errors, then those are reported and the process halts. Now this depends since it may fail (for example, not enough space; or something else went wrong), but sometimes it just asks another confirmation question from the user and you can still force the process (for example, the partition sizes aren't identical when restoring, do you want to still restore the images, and such). Follow the instructions!
Next: Clonezilla Server Edition >>
More Server Administration Articles
More By Barzan 'Tony' Antal
