Max Wanadoo
max.wanadoo at gmail.com
Sat Sep 26 07:36:33 CDT 2009
Hi, I pass this info on for anybody who is thinking about creating a system image. I have just had to rebuild my HP Pavilion and then installed all the software etc, followed by all the updates, etc. Took absolutely hours and hours. I then wanted to take a snapshot image of my Drive C: so that if it happens again, I can just restore the image. The software I used was Clonezilla which is FREE opensource software. It took about 4 hours to copy 582 Gb disk with 124 Gb used. The image created on my USB Seagate 1.5Tb HD was 82 Gb. I believe Clonezilla only copies sectors physically used. Warning: there is no lovely GUI interface. You create a CD from an image and then change you bios setting to ensure you boot from the CD. At various times it will ask you for information, in particular which drive you want backing up and which drive you are backing up to. Make sure you GET THIS right and read the screen slowly and carefully. I haven't got the patience to spend another 4 hours to test the restore, but to do so, you boot from the CD again and then select the option to Restore instead of Create image. It was painless and appeared to have gone through without a hitch. My system is a 64bit OS running Windows Vista Home Premium and the Clonezilla was the 32bit program. Don't be frightened about the use of exe with the words linux in the title, it works just fine on windows. It also creates a text file with the parameters to run it again - don't know where it put it though!! Hope I can find it, because then I can rerun this from a batch file overnight at regular intervals. Next job it to make sure everything loads and runs ok and then to install the VirtualBox stuff. Max