I downloaded the iso and burnt it to a usb stick using USB Stick Writer but when I went to check found that there were 2 usb sticks labelled Rescuezilla and when I tried to check the contents both give the attached error. I a m too inexperienced to make any sense of this and would welcome any explanation.advice.
Linux Mint 19.3
It sounds like you correctly wrote the image to your USB stick. Now your USB stick contains multiple partitions that Rescuezilla needs to operate, but there is no need to try and access these partitions using your Linux Mint operating system's file manager.
Because Rescuezilla is a "live environment", the way to start it is to reboot your computer and use the keyboard to boot from USB rather than your internal hard drive.
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-08
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Interesting. I have never come across a disk or usb stick - even live ones - which could not be seen by file manager. I will try the booting game and see what happens but probably not till tomorrow.
Thank you for educating the ignorant!
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Side note to address your attached image: the message you see about /dev/sdb3 not being mountable is to be expected. If you wish to examine the root filesystem of your Rescuezilla USB stick, the correct command is to run mount /dev/sdb /mnt (yes sdb, not sdb3). The reason is Rescuezilla image is an ISO9660 filesystem written directly onto your device (/dev/sdb) with no partition table (though within the ISO9660 filesystem there are MBR and GPT partition tables -- which I find a very strange concept). Of the 3 partitions exposed in the GPT partition table, only the EFI System Partition appears to be correctly exposed. I'm not sure why that is, but it definitely does not matter: the ESP is all that matters during EFI boot. Regardless of this, the Rescuezilla roadmap calls for getting rid of ISO9660 and move to partitioning structure with persistence (task #8), so there's no point trying to expose the other two partitions on GPT.
I probably should resolve this at some point, but it low priority because it doesn't make any functional difference (at least for the official instructions using balenaEtcher).
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-09
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Today I tried Rescuezilla to maake a backup of my ThinkPad notebook
(Linux MInt 19.3) and everything went like clockwork and I was most
impressed. I then tried it on my deskltop (Linux Mint 19.3) and it was
incredibly slow. I went off for lunch and came back to find it stuck
and shutdown the program. I then decided to try it agin and after 28
minutes it stuck again. I looked at the two files and discovered that
they were identical and had stopped at the same place. Here is one :-
I'm glad to here your backup of your ThinkPad went smoothly. It's very interesting to hear the Rescuezilla progress bar stalled during the backup of your desktop. This may indicate an internal utility like partclone has itself stalled, or that Rescuezilla didn't handle something. Please send me the files named 'clonezilla-img' from the stalled backup images and I will analyse exactly what went wrong.
Rescuezilla v2.0 is a complete re-write and has introduced an issue where some users are experiencing backups running at 30% of the expected speed (task #125). I will fix that for Rescuezilla 2.1, where I'll be adding many other useful features and bug fixes too. Rescuezilla v2.1 is realistically still a few weeks away from being released.
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-11
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From the clonezilla-img file, as best I can tell the partclone utility used internally by Rescuezilla is stuck trying to process the /dev/sdb1 partition (which contains an NTFS filesystem), but the process is unable to proceed for some reason.
This potentially could be due to an underlying filesystem inconsistency which partclone is not handling well. As a first step, it's worth trying to run a filesystem check:
The best way to fix this is to boot Windows and run chkdsk to do a filesystem check of the NTFS partition of your Toshiba 1TB drive. Here's a chkdsk tutorial I found. You may wish to initially run the filesystem check without the "fix errors" flag, so it scans in read-only mode as a sanity check without modifying the filesystem in any way.
Interesting. I went back and checked on how Rescuezilla designated my
disks for me to choose which disk/partition to backup and this is ow my
C:\System drive is shown.
465GB STS...(scsi) (System 117GB ntfs) (1kb extended) (348GB ext4 Linux
Mint 19.3 Tricia)
There is no distinction between the Windows section and the Linux
section despite the fact that it logs sdb1 and presumably sda for
Linux. The next dialog asks to choose partitions but these are
partitions on my second hard drive, not on the hard drive C;.
My ThinkPad was not dual-boot but purely Linux so it worked perfectly.
It seems the program may continue to have problems with dual-boot
systems unless it presents the partitions separately. I do not want to
backup Windows, only Linux. Windows has a built-in imaging system which
works very well.
I have run a Checkdisk but ended up requesting fixing as well because I
usually do it that way and clicked on it before I had a second think. I
had to request it during a boot but strangely it did not present any of
the step by step progress it normally does but it took a very long time
so I assume it did all the steps. I will try another backup tomorrow
but if there is an unresolved problem on the Windows partition I will
probably have the same result.
I seem to be causing you some problem but hopefully there is an
educational value to this exercise - if you do find the cause and the
solution. Thank you for your time and patoence.
Regards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-12
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Just to be clear, from your clonezilla-img log file you are only doing a backup of your /dev/sdb drive which contains a primary 126GB NTFS partition (/dev/sdb1), and logical partition 374GB EXT4 (/dev/sdb5).
It looks like /dev/sdb1 is your Windows files, and /dev/sdb5 is your Linux Mint 19.3 root file system, but your Linux installation (and possibly your Windows installation) could be spanning multiple disks (it's hard to tell). You might also want to be doing a backup of your /dev/sda drive.
I recommend treading carefully. Given your familiarity with with Linux, I suggest on Backup Step 1: Select Drive to Backup make sure that Show hidden devices (for advanced users) checkbox is ticked. Take note of the exact device nodes (/dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc /dev/sdd). Then close Rescuezilla and open GParted Partition Editor and confirm exactly which hard drive you want to backup. Then close GParted and run Rescuezilla as normal.
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If Rescuevilla identified the disks and partitions using standard Linux
naming then there would be less of a problem. It named the disk
exactly as I reported in one long description.
I have attached two figures produced by Disks. I have two 500GB disks
and the second is the one concerning us now. "System" is my name for
the Windows C:\ drive (ntfs) and this is sdb1. I do not understand what
the Extended partition is but is labelled sdb2. Partition 5 is sdb5
(ext4) and is no doubt my actual Linux partition
Disk 1 is actually given over to storage in 2 major partitions named
"Data" and "Storage"., both ntfs. The small partition names as "Z" by me
under Windows is something to do with the main Windows partition but why
it is on this disk I do not know but Linux sees it as sda1. I would
have thought that sdb1 would be named sda1. These three partitions are
offered by Rescuevilla as choices for backup but have nothing to do with
the main disk.
I actually only want to backup the image of sdb5.
A final comment. "Given your familiarity with Linux ..." is a cause for
hilarity! I have been battling for a few months and am still using
Windows for Quicken, Paint Shop Pro, Lotus Approach and Brother's Keeper
- my family tree. I struggled with GnuCash, never got off th ground
with Gimp and have not found a way to carry my databases over to Libre
Office Base. I could start from scratch but my library holds 1,200
books for a start. Since I have produced images of Windows on a monthly
basis for many years I looked at Clonezilla (a bit of a struggle but it
did work) and now Rescuezilla - marvellous on a straight Linux machine
because I want to be able to save my bacon with a Restore if anything
goes wrong. I do not know enough about the innards of Windows or Linux
to sort out problems.
Once again, thank you for your patience. I will have another bash
today. By the way, somewhere along the line I found myself faced with
the optin of Bios or UEFI and as I have no experience of the later used
Bios. Would this have made a difference?
Regards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
If Rescuevilla identified the disks and partitions using standard Linux
naming then there would be less of a problem.
To see standard Linux naming using Rescuezilla simply tick theShow hidden devices (for advanced users) checkbox.
By the way, somewhere along the line I found myself faced with
the optin of Bios or UEFI and as I have no experience of the later used
Bios. Would this have made a difference?
No it would not have made a difference here. Rescuezilla supports both BIOS and UEFI systems.
I do not understand what the Extended partition is but is labelled sdb2.
An "extended partition" is a way to have more than 4 partitions on DOS formatted disks. Your Linux Mint installer probably automatically created this partition.
"System" is my name for the Windows C:\ drive (ntfs) and this is sdb1. I do not understand what the Extended partition is but is labelled sdb2. Partition 5 is sdb5 (ext4) and is no doubt my actual Linux partition
I actually only want to backup the image of sdb5.
I agree sdb5 contains your Linux Mint root filesystem. If you don't care about sdb1 (which appeared to have a problem during your backup), you don't need to backup that partition.
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I tried again tis morning and included /Show hidden devices /which was
useful in that I was able to choose \dev\sdb 465GB and then choose
partition 3, 348GB ext4. However the program once again halted at 28%
after 14 minutes. and it would appear that the problem file is still
there. I have attached the log file as before.
I will go back and run "Disks" from Rescuezilla to see how it names the
disks and partitions.
REgards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Not surprisingly since MInt is based in Ubuntu, the Disks program on
Rescuezilla returns identical images of the disks as the Mint version.
So no help there.
Has anyone running a dual boot system with Linux and Windows on the sae
disk reported success with Rescuezilla? It obviously worked perfectly
on my notebook where I installed Mint over the original Windows.
I await your next response with eager anticipation. So near but so far.
Regards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-13
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Thanks for letting me know that your desktop NTFS partition still stops progressing after 14 minutes. Many users have used Rescuezilla with Windows and Linux dual boot systems without this issue.
As mentioned earlier, a few months ago a user had a similar issue with Rescuezilla v1.0.6.1. Rescuezilla v2.0 is a complete rewrite in a completely different programming language, so it's very likely a problem with the partclone application used internally rather than a problem with Rescuezilla.
At this stage, you may as well try making a backup with Clonezilla (which uses a more recent version of partclone. Please download clonezilla-live-2.7.0-10-amd64.iso and create a bootable USB stick.
Boot your desktop machine with your USB stick, and on your ThinkPad laptop, please open these instructions and follow them.
If the Clonezilla backup is successful you'll be able to restore it using Rescuezilla.
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I am not ssurprised it worked if the OS's were on separate disks - my
question was whether they worked when both were on the same disk.
I am not sure whether you are suggesting using Clonzilla to see how it
manages in this situation or whether you are suggesting it as an interim
measure to make a backup. In any case I downloaded the latest version
and created a new live USB flash disk (Ihad used the previous version on
my ThinPad netbook - with difficulty!) However, even after downloading
the large tome of instructions I did not manage to get it going. I got
as far as selecting the EXT4 partition and it then gave me a list of
folders starting with / and listing the entire contents and asked me to
choose which one to image. I gave up at this stage
It was because of confusing instructions on my previous outing with
Clonezilla that I have been looking at Foxclone (unsuccessful) and now
Rescuezilla and there is no doubt that your product is by far the
easiest to deal with. Unfortunately it does not achieve the final
objective. Should I just write this off as another failure or is there
a possibility that you can discover the cause of what seems to be my
particular problem.
REgards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-15
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Yes, Rescuezilla is able to backup and restore dual boot hard drives.
A backup of an NTFS partition consistently stopping at a certain point is likely due to a bug in the current version of partclone used internally by Rescuezilla v2.0. I suspect its a bug internal to partclone because a user reported a similar issue with a previous version of Rescuezilla, back when the application was written in a completely differently.
Clonezilla provides a more recent version of partclone so should not exhibit this issue. I suggested trying Clonezilla both to confirm this hypothesis, and to provide an interim backup solution.
I got as far as selecting the EXT4 partition and it then gave me a list of
folders starting with / and listing the entire contents and asked me to
choose which one to image. I gave up at this stage
Clonezilla asks for the partition in which to save your backup images, then asks you for the folder to save your backup image in. After you have selected that you can select the partition you want to create a backup of.
I think its worth trying Clonezilla again If you're successfully able to create a backup image of your partition with Clonezilla, then partclone has fixed the bug.
I think trying Clonezilla again provides a good interim solution.
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I guess you have found a bad guinea pig here. I ran Clonezilla again,
accepted / as the source but it then offers sda1 as the source.
Unfortunately on my desktop the System disk is sdb not sda and the Linux
partition is sdb5 - which I had selected. I have made repeated attempts
choosing both to clone the disk and to clone a partition and using
Beginner Mode and Expert Mode but in no case am I offered sdb5. It only
lists sda1, sda2, sdb1 and sdb2 and then external drives.
There may be a way round this predicament (apart from opening the case
and switching the drives around) but I find the instructions for
Clonezilla so obtuse that I do not know where to attempt something
different. I can't remember why my drives are reversed because it
occurred when I took delivery of my custom built machine from PC
Specialists back in 2012. I just remember that there was some booting
problem and I, unwisely perhaps, undertook to open up and I probably put
them in the wrong order.
It is many years since I looked inside and I am somewhat reluctant to
attempt the change since I cannot remember how one designated master and
slave but will try to find time to look into that problem before I reach
for the screwdriver.
I guess from your explanation that it is something internal on the basic
software that is at fault and not your program that I will have to wait
a while. The author of Foxclone is working on a rewrite which he hopes
will overcome the difficulty I had with that one.
Like everyone else in the pandemic - patience is the answer.
Regards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-17
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I think I have some good news this time. I searched around the web and
found several articles describing how to use Clonezilla whiich seemed
less obscure than the Clonezilla notes. Clonezilla says things like you
have to choose a destination and a source but does not actually say
which one you are choosing at the time and it would appear that I was
picking sdb5 as the destination rather then the source. Thiis being the
main Linux partition the program correctly declined to use it and thus
did not show it in the list of possible source partitions. So I ran it
again, choose an external HD as the destination and it went on to
include sdb5 in he list of possible source partitions. It asked for
confirmation which I gave and then stopped with a message Failed to run
partclone program to save or restore an image.
So it seems you were right in assuming it was the inbuilt partclone. I'm
impressed. I went on to investigate partclone and checked Software
Manager but it did not show an installed item but offered to install a
version 0.3.11-1 build 1. so it is in the Linux Mint repository. The
question is, if I install this will it overwrite the existing partclone
and, more importantly, is this a different version which may in fact
work for both Clonezilla and Rescuezilla? (Incidentally, would partclone
be used by Timeshift and would installing another version have any
effect on that?
Once again I wait in eager anticipation! This has been an exciting
episode in a Pandemic world!
Regards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-17
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There's no need to idea to install a new version of partclone on your Linux Mint repository. At some point I will start compiling the latest version of partclone from the source code, just like Clonezilla does. Also the bug you experienced may occur even on the latest version of partclone.
It's possible to ask Clonezilla to use another application called ntfsclone instead of partclone. This may produce better results. I know you're not that comfortable with Clonezilla, but any backup you make can be restored using Rescuezilla. To do this you would need to select Expert Mode' rather 'Beginner Mode' and then selecting the "priority" to the -q ntfsclone > partimage > dd menu item rather than -q2 partclone > partimage > dd. Leave all additional screens with their default selections:
Clonezilla 'Expert Mode' has far more options than 'Beginner Mode' but you don't need to change any of the extra options except for the "priority".
I think ntfsclone will have more success for your filesystem compared to partclone. Rescuezilla v2.0 only supports restoring ntfsclone backups, but in the future Rescuezilla will support creating a backup using ntfsclone.
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I lay in bedd last night thinking over the days events and it struck me
that partclone was not part of MInt but was part of the live Ubuntu
system installed from the flash disk. Since both Rescuezilla and
Clonezilla seem to be having problems with their individual partclone
modules does this mean that there is a (hardware?) problem on my
desktop? I am not sure I want to or need to pursue the problem with
Clonezilla as you describe. I am really not that computer competent and
am prepared to wait until Rescuezilla or Foxclone are modified.
Incidentally, I have had a prolonged conversation with Rescuezilla but I
assume you have a name which would make the conversation a little more
friendly. I did find a report which said Rescuezilla was based in Oz
but it would be interesting to know whereabouts. I have several
relatives and friends in that part of the world.
Regards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-17
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Since both Rescuezilla and Clonezilla seem to be having problems with their individual partclone modules does this mean that there is a (hardware?) problem on my
desktop?
No, there's is almost certainly a bug within partclone that effects NTFS filesystems. As mentioned earlier, a few months ago a user had an almost identical-sounding issue with Rescuezilla v1.0.6.1.
Hopefully somebody who is experiencing the bug can reproduce on the most recent version of partclone and a file a bug report with the author of partclone: https://github.com/Thomas-Tsai/partclone
I am not sure I want to or need to pursue the problem with Clonezilla as you describe.
OK that's fine. My advice was to use Clonezilla's ntfsclone utility to make your backup rather the default partclone utility because ntfsclone is a completely different application so is unlikely to experience the same issue (and Rescuezilla can restore ntfsclone images no problem).
I did find a report which said Rescuezilla was based in Oz but it would be interesting to know whereabouts. I have several relatives and friends in that part of the world.
I am currently based in Adelaide, but intend on moving to San Francisco hopefully in the next few months.
Regards,
Shasheen Ediriweera
Rescuezilla developer
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Interesting name. Looks Asiatic to me but I cannot tell where nor
discern any gender My surname is obviously Scandinavian as my father
was born in Norway but I was born in South Africa and have been in the
UK since 1979.
I read through the Clonezilla notes again and realised that all you were
suggesting involved just making a choice on a menu so I had another go
and selected ntfsclone. The program duly ran but put y=up a notice
"Starting to clone with dd mode. My reading of the choices was tht dd
was a fallback option if ntfs was not available but you will probably
know better than I what is going on. Anyway the action proceeded very
slowly and after 50 minutes terminated "because the disk was full". I
had checked this out before starting and Disks showed the sdb5 partition
to consist of 68GB used and the external HD to have 306GB free so I do
not kow what happened here. My attempts to check out the ext. HD failed
because file manager said that it could not mount the drive. I presumed
that there had been an abnormal termination which left the disk in an
unusual state. So I tried to format the disk (using Disks) and ended up
with a disk which Disks describes as unallocated space and file manager
does not even see.
I am too ignorant to anything further at this stage If you have any
suggestions I would be very grateful.
Regards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-19
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My apologies. I forgot to tell you to choose the 'saveparts' Clonezilla menu item rather than the 'savedisk' item. You're saving all the partitions from your hard drive, and ntfsclone cannot make a backup of your Linux partition so is falling back to raw dd byte-for-byte mode. This mode copies the entire partition regardless of how much free space is available, leading to a very large backup image.
I wanted you to only make a backup of your NTFS partition using the ntfsclone mode.
If your external hard drive is out of disk space there are ways to mount it and remove the data. You didn't need to format it. Formatting has deleted all the information on your external hard drive.
Did you have any important data on the external hard drive you chose to format? If so, please immediately tell me and don't make any changes to it until I have carefully told you exactly what to do to restore your data.
If you don't have any important data on that external hard drive I will provide you with a tutorial on how to create a filesystem on the drive using your preferred operating systems of Windows or Linux Mint.
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I downloaded the iso and burnt it to a usb stick using USB Stick Writer but when I went to check found that there were 2 usb sticks labelled Rescuezilla and when I tried to check the contents both give the attached error. I a m too inexperienced to make any sense of this and would welcome any explanation.advice.
Linux Mint 19.3
Hi Ken,
It sounds like you correctly wrote the image to your USB stick. Now your USB stick contains multiple partitions that Rescuezilla needs to operate, but there is no need to try and access these partitions using your Linux Mint operating system's file manager.
Because Rescuezilla is a "live environment", the way to start it is to reboot your computer and use the keyboard to boot from USB rather than your internal hard drive.
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-08
Interesting. I have never come across a disk or usb stick - even live ones - which could not be seen by file manager. I will try the booting game and see what happens but probably not till tomorrow.
Thank you for educating the ignorant!
Oh I should have mentioned, the root cause of the Rescuezilla v2.0 USB stick partitions being unable to be accessed by some file managers appears to be due to the filesystem offsets exposed by the Rescuezilla v2.0 ISO9660 filesystem being correctly exposed in the MBR partition table, but not in GPT partition table:
I probably should resolve this at some point, but it low priority because it doesn't make any functional difference (at least for the official instructions using balenaEtcher).
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-09
Today I tried Rescuezilla to maake a backup of my ThinkPad notebook
(Linux MInt 19.3) and everything went like clockwork and I was most
impressed. I then tried it on my deskltop (Linux Mint 19.3) and it was
incredibly slow. I went off for lunch and came back to find it stuck
and shutdown the program. I then decided to try it agin and after 28
minutes it stuck again. I looked at the two files and discovered that
they were identical and had stopped at the same place. Here is one :-
/media/ken/SAMSUN 3008/Backups/2020-11-10-1630-img-rescuezilla/sdb-pt.sf
/media/ken/SAMSUN
3008/Backups/2020-11-10-1630-img-rescuezilla/sdb-pt.parted.compact
/media/ken/SAMSUN 3008/Backups/2020-11-10-1630-img-rescuezilla/sdb-pt.parted
/media/ken/SAMSUN 3008/Backups/2020-11-10-1630-img-rescuezilla/sdb-mbr
/media/ken/SAMSUN
3008/Backups/2020-11-10-1630-img-rescuezilla/sdb-hidden-data-after-mbr
/media/ken/SAMSUN 3008/Backups/2020-11-10-1630-img-rescuezilla/sdb-chs.sf
/media/ken/SAMSUN
3008/Backups/2020-11-10-1630-img-rescuezilla/sdb1.ntfs-ptcl-img.gz.aa
/media/ken/SAMSUN 3008/Backups/2020-11-10-1630-img-rescuezilla/parts
/media/ken/SAMSUN
3008/Backups/2020-11-10-1630-img-rescuezilla/Info-smart.txt
/media/ken/SAMSUN
3008/Backups/2020-11-10-1630-img-rescuezilla/Info-packages.txt
/media/ken/SAMSUN
3008/Backups/2020-11-10-1630-img-rescuezilla/Info-lspci.txt
/media/ken/SAMSUN 3008/Backups/2020-11-10-1630-img-rescuezilla/Info-lshw.txt
/media/ken/SAMSUN 3008/Backups/2020-11-10-1630-img-rescuezilla/Info-dmi.txt
/media/ken/SAMSUN 3008/Backups/2020-11-10-1630-img-rescuezilla/disk
/media/ken/SAMSUN 3008/Backups/2020-11-10-1630-img-rescuezilla/dev-fs.list
/media/ken/SAMSUN
3008/Backups/2020-11-10-1630-img-rescuezilla/clonezilla-img
/media/ken/SAMSUN 3008/Backups/2020-11-10-1630-img-rescuezilla/blkid.list
/media/ken/SAMSUN 3008/Backups/2020-11-10-1630-img-rescuezilla/blkdev.list
most of these files were small text files and all measured in kb except
for one aidio file which was 1.7GB.
Does anything here help to find a solution to a very disappointing event
after the initial success.
Regards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-11
Hi Ken,
I'm glad to here your backup of your ThinkPad went smoothly. It's very interesting to hear the Rescuezilla progress bar stalled during the backup of your desktop. This may indicate an internal utility like
partclonehas itself stalled, or that Rescuezilla didn't handle something. Please send me the files named 'clonezilla-img' from the stalled backup images and I will analyse exactly what went wrong.Rescuezilla v2.0 is a complete re-write and has introduced an issue where some users are experiencing backups running at 30% of the expected speed (task #125). I will fix that for Rescuezilla 2.1, where I'll be adding many other useful features and bug fixes too. Rescuezilla v2.1 is realistically still a few weeks away from being released.
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-11
As requested.
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-11
From the
clonezilla-imgfile, as best I can tell thepartcloneutility used internally by Rescuezilla is stuck trying to process the /dev/sdb1 partition (which contains an NTFS filesystem), but the process is unable to proceed for some reason.This potentially could be due to an underlying filesystem inconsistency which
partcloneis not handling well. As a first step, it's worth trying to run a filesystem check:For completeness I note that a few months ago another user experienced a very similar issue where doing a backup of an NTFS filesystem in a RAID configuration consistently stalled after 2.75 hours. I spoke to the user by email, and their filesystem check and badblock scans revealed no errors the issue yet the issue was apparently still present, which indicates a bug in the
partcloneutility.I recommend trying a
chkdskfilesystem check then try to make a backup of your desktop again.Interesting. I went back and checked on how Rescuezilla designated my
disks for me to choose which disk/partition to backup and this is ow my
C:\System drive is shown.
465GB STS...(scsi) (System 117GB ntfs) (1kb extended) (348GB ext4 Linux
Mint 19.3 Tricia)
There is no distinction between the Windows section and the Linux
section despite the fact that it logs sdb1 and presumably sda for
Linux. The next dialog asks to choose partitions but these are
partitions on my second hard drive, not on the hard drive C;.
My ThinkPad was not dual-boot but purely Linux so it worked perfectly.
It seems the program may continue to have problems with dual-boot
systems unless it presents the partitions separately. I do not want to
backup Windows, only Linux. Windows has a built-in imaging system which
works very well.
I have run a Checkdisk but ended up requesting fixing as well because I
usually do it that way and clicked on it before I had a second think. I
had to request it during a boot but strangely it did not present any of
the step by step progress it normally does but it took a very long time
so I assume it did all the steps. I will try another backup tomorrow
but if there is an unresolved problem on the Windows partition I will
probably have the same result.
I seem to be causing you some problem but hopefully there is an
educational value to this exercise - if you do find the cause and the
solution. Thank you for your time and patoence.
Regards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-12
Just to be clear, from your
clonezilla-imglog file you are only doing a backup of your /dev/sdb drive which contains a primary 126GB NTFS partition (/dev/sdb1), and logical partition 374GB EXT4 (/dev/sdb5).It looks like /dev/sdb1 is your Windows files, and /dev/sdb5 is your Linux Mint 19.3 root file system, but your Linux installation (and possibly your Windows installation) could be spanning multiple disks (it's hard to tell). You might also want to be doing a backup of your /dev/sda drive.
I recommend treading carefully. Given your familiarity with with Linux, I suggest on Backup Step 1: Select Drive to Backup make sure that Show hidden devices (for advanced users) checkbox is ticked. Take note of the exact device nodes (/dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc /dev/sdd). Then close Rescuezilla and open GParted Partition Editor and confirm exactly which hard drive you want to backup. Then close GParted and run Rescuezilla as normal.
If Rescuevilla identified the disks and partitions using standard Linux
naming then there would be less of a problem. It named the disk
exactly as I reported in one long description.
I have attached two figures produced by Disks. I have two 500GB disks
and the second is the one concerning us now. "System" is my name for
the Windows C:\ drive (ntfs) and this is sdb1. I do not understand what
the Extended partition is but is labelled sdb2. Partition 5 is sdb5
(ext4) and is no doubt my actual Linux partition
Disk 1 is actually given over to storage in 2 major partitions named
"Data" and "Storage"., both ntfs. The small partition names as "Z" by me
under Windows is something to do with the main Windows partition but why
it is on this disk I do not know but Linux sees it as sda1. I would
have thought that sdb1 would be named sda1. These three partitions are
offered by Rescuevilla as choices for backup but have nothing to do with
the main disk.
I actually only want to backup the image of sdb5.
A final comment. "Given your familiarity with Linux ..." is a cause for
hilarity! I have been battling for a few months and am still using
Windows for Quicken, Paint Shop Pro, Lotus Approach and Brother's Keeper
- my family tree. I struggled with GnuCash, never got off th ground
with Gimp and have not found a way to carry my databases over to Libre
Office Base. I could start from scratch but my library holds 1,200
books for a start. Since I have produced images of Windows on a monthly
basis for many years I looked at Clonezilla (a bit of a struggle but it
did work) and now Rescuezilla - marvellous on a straight Linux machine
because I want to be able to save my bacon with a Restore if anything
goes wrong. I do not know enough about the innards of Windows or Linux
to sort out problems.
Once again, thank you for your patience. I will have another bash
today. By the way, somewhere along the line I found myself faced with
the optin of Bios or UEFI and as I have no experience of the later used
Bios. Would this have made a difference?
Regards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-12
To see standard Linux naming using Rescuezilla simply tick theShow hidden devices (for advanced users) checkbox.
No it would not have made a difference here. Rescuezilla supports both BIOS and UEFI systems.
An "extended partition" is a way to have more than 4 partitions on DOS formatted disks. Your Linux Mint installer probably automatically created this partition.
I agree sdb5 contains your Linux Mint root filesystem. If you don't care about sdb1 (which appeared to have a problem during your backup), you don't need to backup that partition.
I tried again tis morning and included /Show hidden devices /which was
useful in that I was able to choose \dev\sdb 465GB and then choose
partition 3, 348GB ext4. However the program once again halted at 28%
after 14 minutes. and it would appear that the problem file is still
there. I have attached the log file as before.
I will go back and run "Disks" from Rescuezilla to see how it names the
disks and partitions.
REgards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-13
Not surprisingly since MInt is based in Ubuntu, the Disks program on
Rescuezilla returns identical images of the disks as the Mint version.
So no help there.
Has anyone running a dual boot system with Linux and Windows on the sae
disk reported success with Rescuezilla? It obviously worked perfectly
on my notebook where I installed Mint over the original Windows.
I await your next response with eager anticipation. So near but so far.
Regards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-13
Thanks for letting me know that your desktop NTFS partition still stops progressing after 14 minutes. Many users have used Rescuezilla with Windows and Linux dual boot systems without this issue.
As mentioned earlier, a few months ago a user had a similar issue with Rescuezilla v1.0.6.1. Rescuezilla v2.0 is a complete rewrite in a completely different programming language, so it's very likely a problem with the
partcloneapplication used internally rather than a problem with Rescuezilla.At this stage, you may as well try making a backup with Clonezilla (which uses a more recent version of
partclone. Please download clonezilla-live-2.7.0-10-amd64.iso and create a bootable USB stick.Boot your desktop machine with your USB stick, and on your ThinkPad laptop, please open these instructions and follow them.
If the Clonezilla backup is successful you'll be able to restore it using Rescuezilla.
I am not ssurprised it worked if the OS's were on separate disks - my
question was whether they worked when both were on the same disk.
I am not sure whether you are suggesting using Clonzilla to see how it
manages in this situation or whether you are suggesting it as an interim
measure to make a backup. In any case I downloaded the latest version
and created a new live USB flash disk (Ihad used the previous version on
my ThinPad netbook - with difficulty!) However, even after downloading
the large tome of instructions I did not manage to get it going. I got
as far as selecting the EXT4 partition and it then gave me a list of
folders starting with / and listing the entire contents and asked me to
choose which one to image. I gave up at this stage
It was because of confusing instructions on my previous outing with
Clonezilla that I have been looking at Foxclone (unsuccessful) and now
Rescuezilla and there is no doubt that your product is by far the
easiest to deal with. Unfortunately it does not achieve the final
objective. Should I just write this off as another failure or is there
a possibility that you can discover the cause of what seems to be my
particular problem.
REgards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-15
Yes, Rescuezilla is able to backup and restore dual boot hard drives.
A backup of an NTFS partition consistently stopping at a certain point is likely due to a bug in the current version of
partcloneused internally by Rescuezilla v2.0. I suspect its a bug internal topartclonebecause a user reported a similar issue with a previous version of Rescuezilla, back when the application was written in a completely differently.Clonezilla provides a more recent version of
partcloneso should not exhibit this issue. I suggested trying Clonezilla both to confirm this hypothesis, and to provide an interim backup solution.Clonezilla asks for the partition in which to save your backup images, then asks you for the folder to save your backup image in. After you have selected that you can select the partition you want to create a backup of.
I think its worth trying Clonezilla again If you're successfully able to create a backup image of your partition with Clonezilla, then
partclonehas fixed the bug.I think trying Clonezilla again provides a good interim solution.
I guess you have found a bad guinea pig here. I ran Clonezilla again,
accepted / as the source but it then offers sda1 as the source.
Unfortunately on my desktop the System disk is sdb not sda and the Linux
partition is sdb5 - which I had selected. I have made repeated attempts
choosing both to clone the disk and to clone a partition and using
Beginner Mode and Expert Mode but in no case am I offered sdb5. It only
lists sda1, sda2, sdb1 and sdb2 and then external drives.
There may be a way round this predicament (apart from opening the case
and switching the drives around) but I find the instructions for
Clonezilla so obtuse that I do not know where to attempt something
different. I can't remember why my drives are reversed because it
occurred when I took delivery of my custom built machine from PC
Specialists back in 2012. I just remember that there was some booting
problem and I, unwisely perhaps, undertook to open up and I probably put
them in the wrong order.
It is many years since I looked inside and I am somewhat reluctant to
attempt the change since I cannot remember how one designated master and
slave but will try to find time to look into that problem before I reach
for the screwdriver.
I guess from your explanation that it is something internal on the basic
software that is at fault and not your program that I will have to wait
a while. The author of Foxclone is working on a rewrite which he hopes
will overcome the difficulty I had with that one.
Like everyone else in the pandemic - patience is the answer.
Regards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-17
I think I have some good news this time. I searched around the web and
found several articles describing how to use Clonezilla whiich seemed
less obscure than the Clonezilla notes. Clonezilla says things like you
have to choose a destination and a source but does not actually say
which one you are choosing at the time and it would appear that I was
picking sdb5 as the destination rather then the source. Thiis being the
main Linux partition the program correctly declined to use it and thus
did not show it in the list of possible source partitions. So I ran it
again, choose an external HD as the destination and it went on to
include sdb5 in he list of possible source partitions. It asked for
confirmation which I gave and then stopped with a message Failed to run
partclone program to save or restore an image.
So it seems you were right in assuming it was the inbuilt partclone. I'm
impressed. I went on to investigate partclone and checked Software
Manager but it did not show an installed item but offered to install a
version 0.3.11-1 build 1. so it is in the Linux Mint repository. The
question is, if I install this will it overwrite the existing partclone
and, more importantly, is this a different version which may in fact
work for both Clonezilla and Rescuezilla? (Incidentally, would partclone
be used by Timeshift and would installing another version have any
effect on that?
Once again I wait in eager anticipation! This has been an exciting
episode in a Pandemic world!
Regards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-17
There's no need to idea to install a new version of
partcloneon your Linux Mint repository. At some point I will start compiling the latest version ofpartclonefrom the source code, just like Clonezilla does. Also the bug you experienced may occur even on the latest version ofpartclone.It's possible to ask Clonezilla to use another application called
ntfscloneinstead ofpartclone. This may produce better results. I know you're not that comfortable with Clonezilla, but any backup you make can be restored using Rescuezilla. To do this you would need to select Expert Mode' rather 'Beginner Mode' and then selecting the "priority" to the-q ntfsclone > partimage > ddmenu item rather than-q2 partclone > partimage > dd. Leave all additional screens with their default selections:Clonezilla 'Expert Mode' has far more options than 'Beginner Mode' but you don't need to change any of the extra options except for the "priority".
I think
ntfsclonewill have more success for your filesystem compared topartclone. Rescuezilla v2.0 only supports restoringntfsclonebackups, but in the future Rescuezilla will support creating a backup usingntfsclone.I lay in bedd last night thinking over the days events and it struck me
that partclone was not part of MInt but was part of the live Ubuntu
system installed from the flash disk. Since both Rescuezilla and
Clonezilla seem to be having problems with their individual partclone
modules does this mean that there is a (hardware?) problem on my
desktop? I am not sure I want to or need to pursue the problem with
Clonezilla as you describe. I am really not that computer competent and
am prepared to wait until Rescuezilla or Foxclone are modified.
Incidentally, I have had a prolonged conversation with Rescuezilla but I
assume you have a name which would make the conversation a little more
friendly. I did find a report which said Rescuezilla was based in Oz
but it would be interesting to know whereabouts. I have several
relatives and friends in that part of the world.
Regards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-17
No, there's is almost certainly a bug within
partclonethat effects NTFS filesystems. As mentioned earlier, a few months ago a user had an almost identical-sounding issue with Rescuezilla v1.0.6.1.Hopefully somebody who is experiencing the bug can reproduce on the most recent version of
partcloneand a file a bug report with the author ofpartclone: https://github.com/Thomas-Tsai/partcloneOK that's fine. My advice was to use Clonezilla's
ntfscloneutility to make your backup rather the defaultpartcloneutility becausentfscloneis a completely different application so is unlikely to experience the same issue (and Rescuezilla can restorentfscloneimages no problem).I am currently based in Adelaide, but intend on moving to San Francisco hopefully in the next few months.
Regards,
Shasheen Ediriweera
Rescuezilla developer
Hi Shassheen,
Interesting name. Looks Asiatic to me but I cannot tell where nor
discern any gender My surname is obviously Scandinavian as my father
was born in Norway but I was born in South Africa and have been in the
UK since 1979.
I read through the Clonezilla notes again and realised that all you were
suggesting involved just making a choice on a menu so I had another go
and selected ntfsclone. The program duly ran but put y=up a notice
"Starting to clone with dd mode. My reading of the choices was tht dd
was a fallback option if ntfs was not available but you will probably
know better than I what is going on. Anyway the action proceeded very
slowly and after 50 minutes terminated "because the disk was full". I
had checked this out before starting and Disks showed the sdb5 partition
to consist of 68GB used and the external HD to have 306GB free so I do
not kow what happened here. My attempts to check out the ext. HD failed
because file manager said that it could not mount the drive. I presumed
that there had been an abnormal termination which left the disk in an
unusual state. So I tried to format the disk (using Disks) and ended up
with a disk which Disks describes as unallocated space and file manager
does not even see.
I am too ignorant to anything further at this stage If you have any
suggestions I would be very grateful.
Regards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-19
Hi Ken,
My apologies. I forgot to tell you to choose the 'saveparts' Clonezilla menu item rather than the 'savedisk' item. You're saving all the partitions from your hard drive, and ntfsclone cannot make a backup of your Linux partition so is falling back to raw dd byte-for-byte mode. This mode copies the entire partition regardless of how much free space is available, leading to a very large backup image.
I wanted you to only make a backup of your NTFS partition using the ntfsclone mode.
If your external hard drive is out of disk space there are ways to mount it and remove the data. You didn't need to format it. Formatting has deleted all the information on your external hard drive.
Did you have any important data on the external hard drive you chose to format? If so, please immediately tell me and don't make any changes to it until I have carefully told you exactly what to do to restore your data.
If you don't have any important data on that external hard drive I will provide you with a tutorial on how to create a filesystem on the drive using your preferred operating systems of Windows or Linux Mint.
That is the strange part. I selected partition, not disk as I always have.
/I wanted you to make a backup of your ntfs partition using the ntfs
module./
My Linux partition sdb5 is formatted in EXT4. What do you mean by ntfs
partition?
There was not important data on the disk otherwise I would not have
formatted it. Thank you for offering to get that up and running again.
Regards, Ken
(Edit by Rescuezilla: Removed Sourceforge's automatic quoting of my entire prior reply)
Last edit: Rescuezilla 2020-11-19