Clone Full Disk to a partition on another HDD
A partition and disk imaging/cloning program
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steven_shiau
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Greetings,
New to CZ and linux in general. I built an ION xbmc media player running a xbmc-Linux-live disto. I've figured out most things, but the most difficult is backing up the entire system (I might bork it trying to upgrade - so I don't upgrade).
I've just found CZ, but my question is about the possibility of backing up the entire O/S HDD to a patition on a 2nd HDD.
The details - The main HDD is a SSD of 32Gb named "sda". The xbmc install process created 3 partitions (sda1 (linux), sda2 (entended),sda5 (linux swap/solaris)
The 2nd HDD in the system is 500Gb WD named "sdb". It is divided into 4 partitions (sdb1 (for full system backup), sdb2 (recent-builds), sdb3 (userdata backup), sdb4 (media)
Using a USB drive for clonezilla, I wanted to backup sda (all 3 partitions) to sdb1 (full-system backup) - WITHOUT overwriting the entire sdb drive. (sdb1 is 32gb in size the same as sda)
Is this possible? ( I can't find any doc about this scenario.)
Appreciate any help - Thx
Basically yes.
You can follow this:
http://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc-content.php?topic=clonezilla-live/doc/01_Save_disk_image
//NOTE// Since you mentioned you are a beginner, I suggest you'd better to backup important data before you use Clonezilla.
Steven.
Thx Steven for the help and the link. That seems to be what I want to do.
It's funny you suggest backing up important data before using CZ - especially that as I beginner I don't know how to backup :) I thought that is what CZ is for :)
My main concern was overwriting the entire HDD (sdb) instead of just writing to partition(sdb1).
Hi,
1. Creating an image of sda to sdb1 won't overwrite anything there. The image is made of a directory with a bunch of files on the sdb1 filesystem. In case sdb1 is full at imaging time, CZ wil simply stop the process.
2. Backup: Steven simply suggests backing up your own data, not the OS's. A misbehaviour is always possible (from the tool, the user, some hardware failure during the image operation, an electric problem, name our own), so having your important files saved apart is always a good idea.
HTH,
Hi jfnif,
Thx very much for the clarification. It's made a big difference. As a noobie to linux, finding steps that work in the manner you expect is probably one of the most difficult things to source. Borking my system is the biggest concern, because I don't know how to fix it should anything go wrong :(
Really appreciate the help guys. I'm planning on giving this a shot this week, so if there are any issues I'll post back.