Backing up to a smaller disk

[Richard R. Gress]

Hi,

I am trying to back up a 500 GB hard disk to a 250 GB one. I was told this would be possible if less than 250 GB of the 500 GB drive was used up. It is way less than 50% used: http://i.imgur.com/ZiYBuD2.png

The problem is, even though way less than 230 GB of the drive is used, Clonezilla quits ay 97% saying that the target disk is full. Upon reboot, it is seen that the target disk, partitioned as xfs with the entire disk, is indeed full.

I went into advanced and chose the first compression option, Tar compression, for dual core. Did I do something wrong? Will it just not work? I really need a backup before upgrading to Kubuntu 13.10 so I appreciate your time.

Thanks,
- Richie

[Fuchs]

At first make a backup for your important data.

Then you could use in the terminal:
sudo e4defrag -v /dev/sda2 (for ext4, in the standard package e2fsprogs)

And check with:
sudo e4defrag -c /dev/sda2

Now it's possible to resize the partition with 'gparted live'.
and to use 'Clonezilla live'.

[Richard R. Gress]

Thanks. Do I have to resize the partition first, though?

EDIT: I mean do I still have to resize the partition before I start the Clonezilla backup.

[Steven Shiau]

"back up a 500 GB hard disk to a 250 GB one" -> Did you mean to clone or to image?

Steven.

[Richard R. Gress]

Whichever works! I was trying to use the Image method because I thought that would be the only way to achieve my goal here.

[Richard R. Gress]

Will doing a Clone backup instead do the trick?

[Steven Shiau]

"back up a 500 GB hard disk to a 250 GB one" -> If you meant to save the data on 500 GB as an image file on a 250 GB disk, yes, you can do that if the used data and the size after compression is less than 250 GB.
If you mean to clone a 500 GB hard disk to 250 GB one, by default you can NOT do that with Clonezilla. It's possible to make that with some tricks, but not 100% working.

Steven.