Has anybody used Clonezilla to clone and successfully restore a Windows XP partition (and still have the system bootable after restoring)? I just went through a nightmare with PING which left me with no choice but to totally reinstall Windows. Not fun.
I'm not planning on doing anything crazy - just back up Windows XP (NTFS) from a SATA hard disk to an image file on another SATA disk that is in the same computer. I would be restoring back to the original drive. Would I still be able to boot after this?
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Sorry to hear of your PING difficulties and thanks for trying Clonezilla! I've had no problem restoring XP partitions using Clonezilla though, on occasion, it may be necessary to use partition editing tools like GParted to restore boot-ability. Also, I've not used SATA drives, but as IDE and USB pose no difficulty, I see no reason why they would be a problem.
In the case you mention, you may not have to fiddle with partitions at all. Just remember, it is always a good idea to back up info before working out a new imaging process!
:)
Good luck!
Alan
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I didn't lose any important data, I back all that up regularly. Unfortunately you can't easily backup a Windows install with all the software installed. Image copies are it. I did have a backup with PING, and I was able to restore it and get at the files in it, but I could not make it bootable no matter what. I spent a day on it and eventually gave up and reinstalled Windows from scratch. I am a musician and use a lot of pro audio software that takes forever to reinstall. Unfortunately there's no way to "test" a Windows image backup.
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Excellent work on the backups! I'm not sure what you mean about not being able to make images with installed software, Clonezilla should have no problems with that. Since I know nothing about PING I can't help you there. However, if you were to make an image with Clonezilla, you could test if the restore process will work by creating a virtual machine with VirtualBox (free) and trying it in there. I have some experience with that and may be able to help. I'm sure there are others on this forum who have experience with other virtual machine hosts and setups who could also help.
Let us know if you get stuck or what happens, good luck!
Alan
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Has anybody used Clonezilla to clone and successfully restore a Windows XP partition (and still have the system bootable after restoring)? I just went through a nightmare with PING which left me with no choice but to totally reinstall Windows. Not fun.
I'm not planning on doing anything crazy - just back up Windows XP (NTFS) from a SATA hard disk to an image file on another SATA disk that is in the same computer. I would be restoring back to the original drive. Would I still be able to boot after this?
jdrukman,
Sorry to hear of your PING difficulties and thanks for trying Clonezilla! I've had no problem restoring XP partitions using Clonezilla though, on occasion, it may be necessary to use partition editing tools like GParted to restore boot-ability. Also, I've not used SATA drives, but as IDE and USB pose no difficulty, I see no reason why they would be a problem.
In the case you mention, you may not have to fiddle with partitions at all. Just remember, it is always a good idea to back up info before working out a new imaging process!
:)
Good luck!
Alan
I didn't lose any important data, I back all that up regularly. Unfortunately you can't easily backup a Windows install with all the software installed. Image copies are it. I did have a backup with PING, and I was able to restore it and get at the files in it, but I could not make it bootable no matter what. I spent a day on it and eventually gave up and reinstalled Windows from scratch. I am a musician and use a lot of pro audio software that takes forever to reinstall. Unfortunately there's no way to "test" a Windows image backup.
jdrukman,
Excellent work on the backups! I'm not sure what you mean about not being able to make images with installed software, Clonezilla should have no problems with that. Since I know nothing about PING I can't help you there. However, if you were to make an image with Clonezilla, you could test if the restore process will work by creating a virtual machine with VirtualBox (free) and trying it in there. I have some experience with that and may be able to help. I'm sure there are others on this forum who have experience with other virtual machine hosts and setups who could also help.
Let us know if you get stuck or what happens, good luck!
Alan