disk imaging software

ALT-T, ALT-O

This isn't an issue in bitwise copies ...

On Wednesday 02 October 2013 19:25 Jim Hawkins wrote in uk.d-i-y:

Boot a linux live CD and use "dd" from the command line. Simple and free.

You can get free Disk Imaging on-line (legally)

Paragon provide free copies via sites such as Give Away of the day ...

Register and you get a free email with the days freebie each day ...

Will that create a bootable copy of a Windows system disc? [I'm not implying that it won't - but am simply interested in the answer]

So presumably cloning works differently from ordinary backup (or manually copying your data to another disk).

What happens after you've made a cloned copy? Can you then boot from and use your cloned-to disk just like the original? It's something I've never done, and although I'm certainly not totally computer-ignorant, it's something I can't get my head around. From at least one YouTube 'tutorial', it seems you can, and the presenter was implying that regular cloning was a far better - and just as easy - as making backup copies (which preserve only your data).

Yes, at least with Acronis, which is the one that I use, you can 'mount' an image as an additional drive and access individual files from it.

On Thursday 03 October 2013 12:35 Roger Mills wrote in uk.d-i-y:

If you clone the whole drive (eg /dev/sda -> /dev/sdb) rather than doing it partition wise, yes it will.

Of the commercial offerings from the various hard drive makers, they are typically a rebadging of Acronis True Image. This is generally a well respect program that does what it says on the tin.

It sounds like you are trying to use one of the big download sites like cnet or filehippo. Indeed their interface are truly dire, and it can be very difficult to find the actual bit of software that you want to download.

In this situation you may be better off getting what you want from the drive manufacturers web site directly.

MS are desperate for you to upgrade, other makers probably don't care much so long as you buy their software.

However in this case its rather a moot point since most drive imaging programs need to boot from CD into a completely separate OS environment so that they have transparent and unfettered access to the partitions without the host OS getting in the way.

Software keeps getting bigger...

Indeed - cloning works mostly at the cluster level rather than the file system level*, so it will produce a duplicate of whatever happens to be on the disk regardless of what format or file system is present on it.

• That's not quite true, since many also allow some inspection of the content of the disk at the file system level to optimise copy speeds, and also to adjust partitions sizes on the fly.

Usually yes. The typical use case would be to hook up the new larger hard drive. Clone it. Power down and swap the new drive into the place of the old and then boot from it. System should be the same as before, but with more space. The clone operation can be a like for like clone (i.e. all partitions copied, and the same size as before) leaving you to adjust partition sizes after the clone, or in most cases the cloning software can do this on the fly.

Cloning is a fast way of copying a whole disk or partition, but its not as flexible as a proper backup regime, since it can't do "incremental" copies (i.e. only the stuff that changed), or maintain a database of previous versions.

The pone problem with dd is that it wll alos exactly clone the partition information, which will not be ideal if you are installing a bigger disk.

You will then need to manually adjust the partition table to expand the new disk image to the available space.

And I suspect that may not always be possible if you go from a small disk to a very much larger one, with a bigger partition table.

However its been a long time since I played those games with windows and low level disk formats..

So dont take that as gospel.

NO sute how modern drives work, but you may need to make the new disk the same disk ID as the old one with jumpers or dip switches. Or tell the bios to boot off the seondary disk rather than te primary, or something.

That depends. a true clone will not increase space.Since partition information is part of the disk image being cloned.

worse, it leaves the disk cluttered with all the gak and fragmentation the original had.

Sigh. Thatsd what is so NIUCE about Linux. since the programs and the opearting system are free, and its very easy - and indeed almsost 'part of how it all worls' to have all the user data in smome very specific places (/home., and /var mainly) its very easy to create a new disk, installa new clean OS and all the programs, and then copy just those two specific areas back...

With SATA drives there are no jumpers to change on the drives. Just put it on the same physical connector, and the BIOS will see it as the same drive as previously.

With IDE, then it will depend on how you cabled it. You may or may not need to swap a drive between master or slave (assuming you are not using cable select)

I think that is what I said... ;-)

The Acronis based options also include the capability to resize - which is more than a true "clone".

True, although sometimes that is what you want - especially if imaging a corrupt drive to preserve a copy before attempting repair.

As a basic concept, its not that much different from having all user data in the \Users\ hierarchy is it?

I paid £14.36 (inc. VAT) for the download version.

(Maybe even cheaper elsewhere ...)

EASEUS Partition Master works well and doesn't install the services etc. that Backup does. I clone my HDD every so often and, so far, it's worked well. I found that deleting Prefetch (XP, boot only) is, if not necessary, certainly helpful in stopping the clone getting too confused.

Like windows then.

try copying the applications back

and running them without a registry edit

It can but it may not be active when its finished.

I used to do it all the time.

If you want to image a windows system then software like acronis will do it live while you are using the system.

Linux won't.

In which case gnu ddrescue is much better than dd as it does a sensible job of copying partly corrupt drives.

(Don't try to use ddrescue from Windows. It can work, but Windows will try to help if the PC needs to be rebooted at any time during the copy. This really messes things up. I discovered this the hard way...)

John