Re: how to create an image of your debian computer hard drive for cloning

[Aniruddha <mailing_list@orange.nl>]

On Tue, 2008-09-30 at 23:14 +0200, Hans Ekbrand wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 09:49:08PM +0200, Aniruddha wrote:
> > On Tue, 2008-09-30 at 14:18 -0400, David Clymer wrote:
> > > On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 1:11 PM, Robert Robert <robertrobert93@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > > Dear All,
> > > > I was wondering how I could make a clone or image of my computer hard disk
> > > > that contains debian OS. I want to do this in order to make an exact copy to
> > > > another clean pc with no os at all. What complete free software can I use
> > > > for this ? Is there a manual some where on the net about this ?
> > > 
> > > I highly recommend Clonezilla-live. it makes cloning to/from any sort
> > > of storage very simple. You can clone to an attached usb drive, to a
> > > network drive via nfs, samba, or ssh. (http://www.clonezilla.org/)
> > > 
> > 
> > Clonezilla uses partimage which I haven't found too reliable. I still
> > prefer to tar /. It works perfectly every time. 
> 
> To tar / will not 
> 
> - partition the disk
> - make a partition bootable
> - put the right files on the right partitions unless the partitions are
>    - created manually
>    - mounted at the correct mountpoints.
> 
> The OP mentioned a "clean pc with no os at all", which sounds much
> like an unpartitioned disk, on which tar / will not work at all (since
> there is no partitions and no filesystem to untar to).

-Boot livecd
-Run cfdisk
-Format partitions
-Unpack tar
-Chroot
-Adjust config files
-Run grub-install
 
This takes about 30 minutes. Alternatively if one really want to do bare
metal recovery; image products from Paragon and Acronis are the best
choice.


-- 
Regards,

Aniruddha