Clonezilla 1.2.7.7 and XP-Ubuntu boot

I've just downloaded and used Clonezilla latest 1.2.7.7 version to CD in order to clone a disk with GRUB2 which boots a XP+Ubuntu dual OS partitions.

I used Clonezilla since it seems one of the few programs which can create an image of the whole disk and make the (dual boot) disk boot again without any other action....but is it really so? or do i have to know anything before I try to restore the image?

Creating the image was a breeze and this new version is really great,but I read somewhere that when restoring (to the same disk) a dual boot system - a disk clone- it would be better to use ADVANCED, and also choose NOT to touch the MBR, if you want to make a successfull reboot...

I am a bit perplexed as I would have thought exactly the opposite,that is,I guessed Clonezilla got the measure of the MBR-Boot too in the cloned image,hence I thought of doing exactly nothing and then boot.....

anyone used the new clonezilla this way can please help?

 

I've successfuly cloned a disk twice before, where both cases it was dual-boot with Win7, using a slightly earlier version of Clonezilla, and I did not use advanced option. It cloned everything, including the MBR/boot sectors. What I hate about Clonezilla regards the imaging/restoring of partitions, is you don't dare re-size the partition you've imaged, even making it larger, or you won't be able to restore back to it later. At least I've never succeeded doing this. Maybe there's a way, but I've never been able to figure it out. Consequenty I don't use Clonezilla anymore. There are better, at least imo, free alternatives. Sorry, I know almost nothing about Clonezilla's "Advanced" options.

 

wat0114, what you say strengthens my idea I dont need to do anything when restoring the image in order to achieve a good booting.

As to ther problems you encountered with partitions i guess -at least in the new version- you can indeed resize,provided the destination disk or space is bigger than the source.

I hope someone else who did use clonezilla can clarify a bit more my doubts, or give some boot-mbr backup suggestion which will help in case the system wont boot right away. (I'd hate having to go to GRUB RESCUE-i never succeeded with that disk- or having to deploy the Live Ubuntu 10.10 again to fix boot).

 

Right, that's what I'd always thought, but, like I mentuioned, re-sizing the target to larger than the image was made from resulted in an error upon trying to restore.

 

Interesting! What would you prefer instead?

 

For Linux there is Paragon's Backup and Recovery 2010 Advanced...

-http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-express/download.html

 

I've used for years Paragon and downloaded B&R Advanced ,installed in the XP partition and proceeded to make a disk image, which definetely is ok by all means in both XP and Ubuntu partitions, but unfortunately it will not recreate the GRUB2 boot entry, resolving in a no-boot.
I wonder if- installing B&R Advanced for Linux in the Ubuntu partition things might go diffrently ,perhaps you need GRUB2 installed in the Linux partition?

No one else here used Clonezilla to restore a dual boot?

 

Thanks - I will try that

 

Hi Karad,

you are trying to restore the individual partitions or the entire disk?

Have you tried Redo Backup and Recovery? Both clonezilla (in default settings) and redo backup are front ends for partclone.

Panagiotis

 

Hello Pandlouk,

thanks for the extremely usefull suggestion about Redo Backup!
Looks like really worth a trial as it is so universal and manageable and also
open source.
I've already prepared a folder for it and will download as i finish writing.

I dont dare voicing my recondite fears about it maybe being too complex or perhaps not being able to boot a dual boot system since it is stated in the brochure that it can even boot an OSless or damaged disk!!
They speak about both Windows and Linux,both NTFS and Ext4,although I did not notice any reference to a dual boot.

But,pandlouk,as I'd like to complete the Clonezilla affair (at least theoretically) before trying Redo,did you ever use Clonezilla for restoring a dual boot disk? Or,if negative,what is your thought about my question, that is, after cloning the disk image with Clonezilla will the GRUB2-XP+UBUNTU dual OS boot alright?
Or do I have to take supplementary moves?
Any help appreciated,thanks

 

Yes, sometimes I use the multiboot CD Clonezilla-SysRescCD.

To answer your question about dual(multi) boot and clonezilla:

- If you have installed GRUB on the mbr, and use it as the default bootmanager, the default settings the are usually ok. (clonezilla by default, searches your partitions and if it finds a GRUB config file, reinstalls GRUB in the mbr).

- If you do not want to reinstall GRUB or you use another bootloader in the mbr (e.g. windows loader, Grub4Dos, etc. and use it to chainload GRUB from another partition), you should select the advanced parameters in Clonezilla and uncheck the entry "-g auto Reinstall grub in client disk MBR".

Panagiotis

 

Just keep in mind you'll have to re-install Grub 2 (unfortunately it's not a perfect backup/recovery program ) using the method I link to in this post, or you may know a different and better method, but I can confirm this one works perfectly. As mentioned in my post, use the --force switch if you need to install grub 2 to a different partition than the standard MBR location at the beginning of the disk. At least this program does restore the root and home partitions without error. I use the recovery cd for offline backups/restores.

 

@pandlouk, your help was great,thanks.
No need for me to uncheck that entry in Clonezilla as I do want to keep GRUB and also i want to let it where the Ubuntu install originally put it,that is ,in the MBR and not in a partition.

You helped me by mentioning both Redo and Clonezilla/systemRescCD : just reading the ineherent documentation about these two progs dispelled all doubts I had about Clonezilla itself.

I now think that Clonezilla can indeed boot after restore as it should have cloned the MBR ,too.

I am going to try a restore tonight in order to find out for sure,anyway.

 

Even if it's installed in MBR?

Hm, so far Clonezilla hasn't produced any errors during restore for me.

Right now, I'm not yet sure in what respect Paragon is better than Clonezilla, if at all. And regarding Redo - yes, it has a nice GUI but I think it's less flexible than Clonezilla since it doesn't have the advanced settings of the latter.

 

Paragon has the option to convert a Windows hard disk to a virtual image - a terrific feature for myself since I can run the image in vmware workstation. With Clonezilla I don't like the fact I'm restricted to restoring to the exact original partition I created the image from; I can't even enlarge the partition then restore the image to it. There's also the differential backup mode so I just feel Paragon offers some additional features that make it better - overall, although Clonezilla is certainly faster and does restore perfectly fine as long as the partition is not touched. I think if you put Grub in the typical place on the drive, then it's okay, no problems, but I don't do that. I have Windows on its own primary and active partition, then Linuux is installed within an extended partition, with a swap, root & home in it, with Grub2 installed on the root.

 

Thanks, wat, for this reply - very helpful. I will look deeper into Paragon.

 

You're welcome, tlu! Too bad Paragon does have the Grub2 recreation limitation as pointed out by karad in post #7, although there is a workaround, of course. There seems to be no perfect Linux imaging solution out there, although I've never tried Image for Linux (not free I guess). Have you and if so, is it a good imaging solution?

 

Yes, I bought it several years ago but didn't use it for a long time because it didn't support ext4. The newer versions do but I haven't really looked into it again thoroughly. I must admit that those countless options and settings mentioned in their manual frightened me ...

 

I've created a few images with Clonezilla on dual boot systems and I happily and easily restored them with their GRUB2 without any hassle.
No need for any complications, proceedings are extremely logical and simple in any language.
I am really impressed by clonezilla speed in both creating and restoring images, both in the simple and the advanced way.
The Linux partition is restored at lightning speed.
I spent some time to check both systems and they both work ok.
Considering also it's not even installed and so there is no resource sucking, it is really remarkable.
It gives the chance to restore dual-boots without unnecessary pains.

 

For backing up Linux parts I agree it's very fast, but it's very slow backing up Windows, although I use ShadowProtect typically for that, except I like to try different products just to se what's out there and how they perform and how reliable they are.

 

wat0114, what you say is true insomuch Clonezilla takes more time to process Windows than Linux, but I suspect the total time taken to backup a Windows partition is absolutely not more than what Paragon or Macrium or Acronis would need-or perhaps it is a negligible (from my perspective) matter of really two-three minutes.

Please remember I am talking about and I need to boot a dual-boot, not a single boot.

I did not take times,but,having Paragon B&R Advanced installed in the Windows part of my dual boot I will try to find out asap if my suspicions are true or not by using Paragon vs Clonezilla in the same disk.

At this stage,unfortunately,I can only take notice of time to Create an image, as I need the pc for a while for other things and restoring a Windows partition with Paragon would entail making a second disk restore with Clonezilla since the boot sector would be in high seas.

 

I took notice of the time employed to create a full image of the disk with both Paragon and Clonezilla-

In my test-mule XP-Ubuntu dual boot machine,82GB,Pentium4,2GB RAM,

PARAGON took 08' for the XP partition and the same 08' for the Ubuntu one
for a total of 16 minutes.

CLONEZILLA took 19' for XP and just 04' for Ubuntu, total 23 minutes.

If you want to add the time for the diskette to be ready its roughly another 3-4 minutes to be added to Clonezilla, but i consider it unfair....

The difference btw Paragon and Clonezilla are a bit more than I remembered,but, considering you dont have to do anything else with clonezilla,while you've still got to fix the MBR with Paragon, I deem even 10 minutes more is still preferable for me.

The comparison I made wa done with a weak machine and I thought that with a more recent and powerfull machine differences in time would shrink a lot.

So I tried Clonezilla in another machine of mine, a Windows7 64 bit, E8400, 4 GB RAM with a 500GB disk, 3 partitions (about 5 times more things to clone than previous pc):

CLONEZILLA took only 20 minutes to clone the entire disk, 13' for the W7 OS partition.

PARAGON can do that in about 14 minutes.

I guess more or less the same Saving Image time proportions apply to Restoring an Image, in regard to Paragon vs Clonezilla times (obviously restoring can take more time than creating).

Resuming, wat114 is right about the slowiness of Clonezilla, but I happily wait a few minutes more to avoid unnecessary hassles.

 

Just something I found out recently when restoring a Clonezilla image, if you get the syntax error: "Something went wrong", try going into the expert options and selecting "-fsck-src-part". This will check for and attempt to correct any errors before restoring. I had a file that was tagged with incorrect time according to the created image time, so this resolved the issue easily.

 

Thanks, a very interesting option.

 

Which version of Clonezilla did you use? The Debian or the Ubuntu based? And if you used the Debian one - was it the i486 or the i686 version? See here for the differences - SMP might make a big difference.