Hello,
I recently added a couple of hard drives to my computer, raising the number of drives from 2 to 4. Originally it ran on a RAID0 configuration, but I wanted to change this to RAID5. I used Clonezilla to backup all the stuff on the original two drives to a network drive, with the hope of restoring them to the newly configured RAID5 setup. I believe Clonezilla resorted to using dd to do the backup, as the file system was NTFS (I think, unless Vista uses another file system). I made the changes to RAID, and restored the image, but the RAID controller was alerting me that there was an error on the RAID5 configuration, and a RAID0 had appeared alongside it, which I'm guessing is what the restore had done for some reason (I assumed that RAID was independent from any disk operations). By this point I figured I'd just revert the RAID to the state it was originally, and restore the image to the first two disks, and find an alternative way of sorting out the disks. However, after restoring the image, the RAID controller again showed an error. Basically it looks like a restore isn't going to work this way, so I'm wondering if anyone can help me restore the image through some form or another. If it can be done to a new RAID5 setup, even better, but I'll settle for getting it back the way it was before, or even just being able to access the files in the image.
Thanks
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
If the image was saved by "dd", you can try to uncompress the image, then use mount command (or ntfs-3g) to mount the image then retrieve the files.
Clonezilla might fail with RAID card, what's the device name show in Clonezilla live ? hda ? sda ? or ?
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Thanks for the reply.
The image was saved in 2Gb chunks, will this still be easy enough to decompress? I have a Fedora9 live USB.
The disk device was shown as SDA1.
I'll have a try at decompressing the image when I get home.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I'm having trouble uncompressing/mounting the image. You see, it has been split into 60 chunks of 2Gb each. I'm beginning to wonder if I even chose compression at all. Anyway, I tried using cat on the files, but it wouldn't get past 2Gb, and then I tried using AcetoneISO2, and that got up to 4Gb, so I figure merging the files isn't the answer. If it helps any, the files are named as follows:
Other files in the folder are:
parts (contains the text 'sda1', and that's it)
sda1-size (empty)
sda-chs.sf (shows cylinder/head/sector information, 19929/255/63 respectively)
sda-mbr (unkown contents, won't open in text editor)
sda-pt.parted (empty)
sda-pt.sf (partition information)
Any ideas? Thanks.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
1. Run "file sda1.dd-img.aa" to see to see it's gzip, bzip or lzop image. Say it's gzip,
2. You can run
cat sda1.dd-img.* | gzip -d -c > sda1.img
(Make sure the working dir has enough disk space here)
3. Then you will have a "sda1.img" which you can mount it by
mount -o loop -t ntfs sda1.img /mnt
or
ntfs-3g sda1.img /mnt -o loop
Here we assume it's ntfs.
Good luck.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
When you mentioned "the process stops at 4Gb", what's the error message ?
Please show more info so that it's easier for others to do something for you.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I figured out why it stopped at 4Gb, and I should have realised earlier... the backup drive is formatted to FAT32. So here's a thought...
I can format the drives in my computer to any format I want, seeing as they're not currently in use, so I suppose I could easily just extract the image to that drive. I figure it won't matter what format I use for this process. But once I have the regular image, can I break it up into chunks without compressing it, so that I can store the chunks on my backup drive they can be directly restored? Or would this cause the same problem as before, and interfere with the RAID setup?
[Segmented zipped image on backup] -> [Full unzipped image on HD] -> [Segmented unzipped image on backup] -> [Restored HD?]
This is assuming that an image can be split up and then restored from the splits. Also, does the image contain just the data from the partition, or is it a very low level copy that works by reading off the disks sector by sector?
Thanks.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Hello,
I recently added a couple of hard drives to my computer, raising the number of drives from 2 to 4. Originally it ran on a RAID0 configuration, but I wanted to change this to RAID5. I used Clonezilla to backup all the stuff on the original two drives to a network drive, with the hope of restoring them to the newly configured RAID5 setup. I believe Clonezilla resorted to using dd to do the backup, as the file system was NTFS (I think, unless Vista uses another file system). I made the changes to RAID, and restored the image, but the RAID controller was alerting me that there was an error on the RAID5 configuration, and a RAID0 had appeared alongside it, which I'm guessing is what the restore had done for some reason (I assumed that RAID was independent from any disk operations). By this point I figured I'd just revert the RAID to the state it was originally, and restore the image to the first two disks, and find an alternative way of sorting out the disks. However, after restoring the image, the RAID controller again showed an error. Basically it looks like a restore isn't going to work this way, so I'm wondering if anyone can help me restore the image through some form or another. If it can be done to a new RAID5 setup, even better, but I'll settle for getting it back the way it was before, or even just being able to access the files in the image.
Thanks
If the image was saved by "dd", you can try to uncompress the image, then use mount command (or ntfs-3g) to mount the image then retrieve the files.
Clonezilla might fail with RAID card, what's the device name show in Clonezilla live ? hda ? sda ? or ?
Thanks for the reply.
The image was saved in 2Gb chunks, will this still be easy enough to decompress? I have a Fedora9 live USB.
The disk device was shown as SDA1.
I'll have a try at decompressing the image when I get home.
I'm having trouble uncompressing/mounting the image. You see, it has been split into 60 chunks of 2Gb each. I'm beginning to wonder if I even chose compression at all. Anyway, I tried using cat on the files, but it wouldn't get past 2Gb, and then I tried using AcetoneISO2, and that got up to 4Gb, so I figure merging the files isn't the answer. If it helps any, the files are named as follows:
sda1.dd-img.aa
sda1.dd-img.ab
sda1.dd-img.ac
...
sda1.dd-img.ch
Other files in the folder are:
parts (contains the text 'sda1', and that's it)
sda1-size (empty)
sda-chs.sf (shows cylinder/head/sector information, 19929/255/63 respectively)
sda-mbr (unkown contents, won't open in text editor)
sda-pt.parted (empty)
sda-pt.sf (partition information)
Any ideas? Thanks.
1. Run "file sda1.dd-img.aa" to see to see it's gzip, bzip or lzop image. Say it's gzip,
2. You can run
cat sda1.dd-img.* | gzip -d -c > sda1.img
(Make sure the working dir has enough disk space here)
3. Then you will have a "sda1.img" which you can mount it by
mount -o loop -t ntfs sda1.img /mnt
or
ntfs-3g sda1.img /mnt -o loop
Here we assume it's ntfs.
Good luck.
Thanks for the help.
Unfortunately, again the process stops at 4Gb. The compression type is lzop.
When you mentioned "the process stops at 4Gb", what's the error message ?
Please show more info so that it's easier for others to do something for you.
I figured out why it stopped at 4Gb, and I should have realised earlier... the backup drive is formatted to FAT32. So here's a thought...
I can format the drives in my computer to any format I want, seeing as they're not currently in use, so I suppose I could easily just extract the image to that drive. I figure it won't matter what format I use for this process. But once I have the regular image, can I break it up into chunks without compressing it, so that I can store the chunks on my backup drive they can be directly restored? Or would this cause the same problem as before, and interfere with the RAID setup?
[Segmented zipped image on backup] -> [Full unzipped image on HD] -> [Segmented unzipped image on backup] -> [Restored HD?]
This is assuming that an image can be split up and then restored from the splits. Also, does the image contain just the data from the partition, or is it a very low level copy that works by reading off the disks sector by sector?
Thanks.