Proper computer back-up - any geeks using clonezilla?

ack

VIP/Donor & WBF Founding Member
May 6, 2010
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Boston, MA
I am sure a lot of us are familiar with Ghost and others. I instead decided to use the open source clonezilla (clonezilla.org) to back up all of my windows and linux boxes to an external 2T USB drive... Why? Because I feel it's the right way to back up:

  1. It forces you to shut down the computer you want to back up, so that you can back up a steady image of a disk, and complete with boot sectors and all
  2. It is a bootable (actually Linux) mini-kernel, that you boot from your CD ROM; you just have to download clonezilla once and then burn as ISO image to a blank CD; the free http://infrarecorder.org/ is good enough (just click Write Image, point to the downloaded ISO image and insert a blank CD)
  3. Then plug in the external USB drive back-up device, to write to or read from
  4. Point to the disks you want to back up (practically any filesystem - windows, linux, Mac, et al)
  5. Select the disks and/or partitions you want to back up, and go

PROs: The right approach; rock solid
CONs:
  1. Must be somewhat of a computer geek to understand the options presented; on the upside, you can just select all defaults, and be careful when pointing to the back-up device and the internal disks to back up so not to mix them up. Even if you get the drives backwards and end up backing up the back-up device itself to the internal drives, there is no harm done because it saves everything in its own directory off of the root directory - so you can't really mess up anything.
  2. VGA text interface

Total cost: $149 for the 2TB USB drive.
 

DonH50

Member Sponsor & WBF Technical Expert
Jun 22, 2010
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Monument, CO
I use acronis, another disk-imaging s/w. You don't have to shut down while it's running, and I can verify (unfortunately) that it will do a complete restore to a new drive if your HD fails ("like it never even happened" ;) ). I, and many others, have had some horrible problems with Ghost and I refuse to let it anywhere near any of my computers (I do use alot of other Norton products, but not Ghost).
 

FrantzM

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
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Hi

I use Open Source whenever possible. I do however use Acronis. One of the problem with backing up a computer is the requirements to have the same hardware or one closely related to restore your programs and sometimes data... The latest version of Acronis, dispenses one from that , often difficult requirement ...Think about trying to revive a 3 years old PC whose motherboard has gone bad ... where you had patiently accumulated hundreds of software and data... It is easy doesn't require you to be a computer geek and is rock-solid.. I would recommend it to the general population.. I'll have a look at clonezilla, in the meantimes. ;)
 

ack

VIP/Donor & WBF Founding Member
May 6, 2010
6,774
1,198
580
Boston, MA
No it's image cloning of partitions or the drive only; you'd need another solution for incremental back-ups. I've used Acronis before too, it's really good; but I need to back up a lot of different machines with one program for all.
 

Jaguar

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2010
221
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Bellevue, WA
Hello Ack, I've recovered a few partitions with the Windows image tool, but I've never had a drive fail. Are there any advantages of using Clonezilla over the built-in Windows process, for a single machine?
 

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