Clone NTFS drives over network?
RedPenguin
Basically I'm around Windows machines all the time and that are 2k,
XP, and Vista.
Basically, I want to run a LiveCD, clone, let the user screw up the
machine, then restore, and have a happy user afterwards.
SystemRescueCD with partimage works for the most part. It restored a
laptop with Vista and a Desktop with 2k, but would not fix a desktop
with XP.
Anyone have a LiveCD with software that they can do what I just said?
RedPenguin
Anyone have any luck with Clonezilla?
Douglas Mayne
> Before any flames, I like and enjoy Linux and use it all the time.
>
> Basically I'm around Windows machines all the time and that are 2k,
> XP, and Vista.
>
> Basically, I want to run a LiveCD, clone, let the user screw up the
> machine, then restore, and have a happy user afterwards.
>
> SystemRescueCD with partimage works for the most part. It restored a
> laptop with Vista and a Desktop with 2k, but would not fix a desktop
> with XP.
>
I haven't used SystemRescueCD, but that is curious. AFAIK, if you restore
to the exact same hardware and exact same partition, then any imaging
technique should work. You can run into problems if the disk geometry or
partition is moved.
>
> Anyone have a LiveCD with software that they can do what I just said?
>
Caveat: I have no experience with Vista. The ntfsclone program has worked
for me when making images of the ntfs versions as included with NT4, W2k,
XP.
AFAIK, all that you need is any liveCD that allows you to run ntfsclone.
Slax is one such liveCD. BTW, ntfsclone makes partition backups. Each
partition and the bootloader must be handled separately when backing up or
restoring.
BTW, I often use nc to transfer images.
Steps:
0. Determine (or set) network addresses of the two machines. I
will assume the following:
a. The network machine which will receive the backup has an ip address of
192.168.1.1.
b. The network machine which is being snapshotted has an ip address of
192.168.1.2.
Fixup as necessary for your network parameters.
1. The At network machine which will hold storage, begin listener process:
$ nc -l -p 1234 >hda1.sf.img.gz
2. At network machine which is booted with a liveCD to make a snapshot
backup:
# ntfsclone -s -o - /dev/hda1 | gzip | nc -w 2 192.168.1.1 1234
This results in a "special format" ntfsclone backup image. An
optional compression stage is added to reduce the image size.
The same general technique can be used to restore an image. man ntfsclone.
--
Douglas Mayne
Mark Hobley
> Basically, I want to run a LiveCD, clone, let the user screw up the
> machine, then restore, and have a happy user afterwards.
I just do a tar backup and restore of the windows partition, and I have
had no problems restoring systems using this method. Sometimes you have
to select the rescue option from the Microsoft Windows CD and run
fixboot c: to reactivate the installation, but this takes just a few
seconds.
Regards,
Mark.
--
Mark Hobley,
393 Quinton Road West,
Quinton, BIRMINGHAM.
B32 1QE.
RedPenguin
> I haven't used SystemRescueCD, but that is curious. AFAIK, if you restore
> to the exact same hardware and exact same partition, then any imaging
> technique should work. You can run into problems if the disk geometry or
> partition is moved.
the same machine using partimage. It was a 45GB partition on /dev/
sda2. I even tried to delete the partition and reformat it after 2
days of it just not working.
First I had hal.dll errors then disk read errors.
RedPenguin
Hobley) wrote:
I wanted to do that but no matter what I did, the XP CD would just go
to "Setup is inspecting your hardware...." then a blank screen and
absolutely nothing would happen afterwards. Which is funny because
the system came with XP, so you would think the XP CD would load.
Douglas Mayne
And, of course, there are problesm if your hardware is failing...
Fred Weigel
Sure, but I "roll my own" -- last one was an openSUSE 10.3
installation, adding "isolinux", taking apart the standard openSUSE boot
script, and adding a new script that gets executed on boot (standard
shell scripting). In turn, that partitions, formats and expands an
archive to the disk, adding "grub", ejecting the CD, and rebooting.
One step specific purpose reinstall.
Takes me a week or so to prepare one -- so you can do it yourself, or
pay us to make one for you. The advantage is that I can add custom
CD-ROM configurations (IDE, SCSI, USB), hard drive (IDE SATA SCSI SAS),
etc. (which the packaged solutions may not offer conveniently).
Either fixed price or on time&materials basis. Email me with more
information if you are interested.
RedPenguin
That's what I thought but I checked my Seagate with SeaTools and it
reports the drive in completely working order. Hard Drive Sentinel
claims 2 bad sectors but that's about it, which many have told me, may
have just came with the drive because I've had them forever it seems
and they never spread with more bad sectors.