Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Recommend a good disk cloning program please

This is topic Recommend a good disk cloning program please in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 12-12-2010, 12:27 PM:

Norton Ghost is probably the most common answer, but I've actually experienced some quirky issues with it in the past. Can anyone recommend a straightforward program that will clone an ENTIRE hard drive to an external USB image?

Requirements...

I don't want to have to physically remove and/or swap around any hard drives to do this.
I don't want to be forced into mounting the backup drive inside the computer.
I am not interested in non-stop backups, such as every hour or every day. I want to be able to make a backup of the entire hard drive bit for bit and file it away.
The simpler the better. Its ok if it has other features, but even one that only does a straightforward disk image clone is just fine. Some of these programs are so concerned about adding useless features they make a mess of things. For example, when I load my copy of Nero, I choose a custom install and uncheck the dozen add-ons such as making label stickers for my cds, cd software player, etc.
A floppy drive is not a possibility. The program needs to run from a USB drive or a CD.

Posted by Sean Weitzel (Member # 244) on 12-12-2010, 01:23 PM:

Ghost comes in two different product lines. Norton Ghost is a consumer product based on a completely different backup technology than Symantec Ghost which uses the lightweight classic ghost backup engine. We use Symantec Ghost almost exclusively at the office and rarely have trouble with it. Let me explain, however that we have CD's with nothing but a bootable Windows PE environment and the very lightweight ghost32.exe app. We're not using a full on retail whistle and bell Norton version

One alternative that I've had good luck with is Acronis True Image. For some reason, it's throughput from a internal disk to a USB disk seems to be twice as fast as using Symantec Ghost.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-12-2010, 06:44 PM:

It's too bad SuperDuper! isn't available for Windows. It has the easiest interface I've seen and if you are backing up a drive that you have created a backup for before, you can use "Smart Backup" or something like that where it only copies what has changed. 100% perfect, bootable copies every time, totally worth the $30 or so it costs. Hell, I'm running off of a SuperDuper! clone right now since not too long ago I upgraded each drive inside my computer to a terabyte each. Still have the same files and folders from 1995 on here and they work great! Ghost can suck it.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 12-12-2010, 08:07 PM:

Stick in any linux livecd and open up the command-line as root (admin).

1) Assuming your source hard disk is recognized as "/dev/sda" by linux and your usb hard disk is mounted as "/mnt/usb" then run the following
dd if=/dev/sda |gzip > /mnt/usb/image.gz

That gives you a compressed image located on your usb drive.

2) To restore from the image file run:
gunzip -c /mnt/usb/image.gz | dd of=/dev/sda

Also, if you're cloning a windows install I can send you a perl script you'd want to run inside windows first before doing this. The script will write zeros to disk for all your free/empty space. Otherwise, your image file could end up a little bigger than expected since when you delete a file it doesn't actually erase the data on the disk (hence why you can do undelete and such).

You can also make the image size smaller by compressing with bzip2 (and decompress with bunzip2 -c) but it'll take longer to compress/decompress.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 12-12-2010, 08:24 PM:

Yep...I use SuperDuper based on Joe's recommendation on my Mac. NEVER had a problem and it is very simple to use. About once per week, I clone my main hard drive, operating system and all for a completely bootable clone. It has worked like a charm.

I hear that Acronis works well on Windoze machines. I have not personally used it.

-Steve

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 12-12-2010, 08:35 PM:

We've also used Acronis successfully a couple of times.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 12-12-2010, 08:46 PM:

And of course Acronus has a ton of different "suites". I really couldn't care less about most of that. I just want a disk CLONE...bit for bit...nothing more. Those of you who have used it, which version will do that?

Also, how exactly does it work? Is there a bootable CD and it runs in dos? That seems to make the most sense to me.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-12-2010, 08:58 PM:

Why can't it just be an application that lives on your hard drive? It doesn't need to be on a CD or run in a different OS or anything like that. SuperDuper is just another app that lives with all of the others and runs even if you have a shit ton of other stuff running, no problem! I surf the web as my drive clones. Speaking of which, now would be a good time for me to make a back-up.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 12-12-2010, 09:03 PM:

quote: Brad Miller
Is there a bootable CD and it runs in dos?

Yes, acronis true image includes a bootable CD for closing purposes.

quote: Joe Redifer
Why can't it just be an application that lives on your hard drive? It doesn't need to be on a CD or run in a different OS or anything like that.

Most cloning applications work where it's not run from inside the cloned system/hard disk because of the fact that in many situations you need an image that couldn't have possibly been changed from the way it had been prior to starting the cloning process. And booting from the disk itself does make some changes to the disk, since stuff will be written to the disk.

On the other hand, for just making a bootable copy for home use, something like SuperDuper sounds like a good choice.

Posted by Michael Voiland (Member # 5386) on 12-13-2010, 01:19 AM:

Clonezilla
ghost
fog project
clonezilla works fine if you dont mind troubleshooting errors.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 12-13-2010, 02:10 AM:

Have you used it Chris? I don't see anything here about a straightforward, no bs clone.

Link to Acronis True Home Image 2011 product page

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-13-2010, 03:35 AM:

But the web site has pictures of happy people smiling at you and they all have laptops. What more do you need, really?

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-13-2010, 05:14 AM:

g4u

Actually, I use Chris's method, but g4u is prettier and more automated.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 12-13-2010, 02:18 PM:

Looks like that page was written with Vi, Scott. [Razz]

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 12-13-2010, 08:20 PM:

quote: Brad Miller
Have you used it Chris? I don't see anything here about a straightforward, no bs clone.

I remember older versions having an option to create bootable media.

You'd just select "Create Bootable Rescue Media" from the menu and go through its steps. Although I still am with Scott on using g4u or dd from linux as those are totally free options.