Windows 7 [Guide] Using Clonezilla-Live as a backup solution

Hi folks,

I've been using Clonezilla-Live for awhile now to create images of my Win 7 and other OS installs.

Clonezilla provides the peace of mind that only a bit by bit image backup regimen
can provide (IMHO).

It does have a learning curve however.

I've created a guide to using Clonezilla to clone\restore a partition.

I've posted this guide at another forum (Scot's Newsletter Forum-All Things Windows).

It is rather lengthy and heavily formatted so rather than post it here (yeah I know I'm lazy)
I will post a link to it here.

A guide to using Clonezilla - Scot's Newsletter Forums

Enjoy.
 
This does look complicated. Is it really that superior that using Acronis True Image ran from the boot disk? I don' know that much about backup methods. I've used the Acronis and done a couple of restores and it was simple.
Joe
 
It's not as complicated as it looks.
I've tred to make my guide as easy and straightforward as I could.
I've a copy of Acronis and a copy of Norton Ghost 9.
I've never used Acronis from a boot disk only from within Windows, same with Ghost 9.
My experience is with using either to clone my Win 7 partition to another hard drive connected via USB adapter.
This worked well when cloning XP, not well with Win 7.
The Win 7 would refuse to boot.

I also had been using another live CD solution, partimage that is run from outside an OS like Clonezilla.
It had similar issues when cloning Win 7.

Clonezilla has none of these issues.

Following my guide creating an image of my Win 7 partition (or any other OS for that matter) is a snap.

After doing it a few times it becomes second nature.

It is easy enough that I can and do use it to create an image before doing anything that might be risky.
Example: MS just released IE 9 beta.
I wanted to try it but remembered from my experience with IE 8 in XP that reverting to the previous version of IE,
wasn't always successful.
This in case I wasn't impressed with IE 9 and needed to revert to IE 8.

With that in mind I took the 15 minutes or so to create an image on my Win 7 install before playing with IE 9.

Good that I did.

IE 9, at least in my case proved to be very buggy on my machine.

After several crashes and other problems I decided to restore my old IE 8 by uninstalling IE 9.

The results weren't entirely satisfactory.

IE 9 left remnants of itself that caused instabilities.

My answer, restore the image I had created just before installing IE 9.

In 6 minutes I had Win 7 back to what it was before I experimented with IE 9.

It's important to know that an image is much more that a simple backup.

It is bit by bit the same as the original and is bootable (if it is an OS).

Clonezilla makes it easy and is free as well.
 
I found with Acronis when restoring it was best to boot from disk. When I loaded Windows 7 initially I left the recovery partition that has Vista. If you try starting from the desktop it goes into system recovery for Vista on reboot. I think Arconis now uses a bootable ISO when you buy online and download. My times are pretty close to yours. I restored twice with no problems. I also have the HD partitioned with system and programs on one and data on the other. Running Acronis form the disk is simple just put disk in reboot and you get a screen like the actual installed program.
Joe
 
I found with Acronis when restoring it was best to boot from disk. When I loaded Windows 7 initially I left the recovery partition that has Vista. If you try starting from the desktop it goes into system recovery for Vista on reboot. I think Arconis now uses a bootable ISO when you buy online and download. My times are pretty close to yours. I restored twice with no problems. I also have the HD partitioned with system and programs on one and data on the other. Running Acronis form the disk is simple just put disk in reboot and you get a screen like the actual installed program.
Joe

Clonezilla can only be used from disk (either bootable CD or USB flash drive\HDD).
 
For the record, I've been doing HD backups since I first found Ghost on their website, back in 1997.
One thing for sure, when you really need your backup program, whatever program you like to use, it better be on some bootable media. What media to use, depends a lot on the capability of your particular PC.
I have mine on both bootable CD's and Flash Drives.

When your hard drive has just gone up in smoke, having your backup/restore program installed in Windows will do you absolutely NO good at all.

With several programs that I've tested, I do the Windows install, then use the program to make a recovery CD, then uninstall the program off of the HD.
The CD should be "Full Function" and if it won't allow you to also do backups as well as a restore, it's NO Good.

Just one last thought, from this Old Timer,,,,,, the best backup is the one that's current, and NOT on your Computer.
Do your backups of your entire C: drive, often (weekly at least) and store your backup in a fireproof location, preferably Off Premises. My own backup DVD's are in a fireproof vault, about 20 miles away.

Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear?
OT
 
[...]
Just one last thought, from this Old Timer,,,,,, the best backup is the one that's current, and NOT on your Computer.
Do your backups of your entire C: drive, often (weekly at least) and store your backup in a fireproof location, preferably Off Premises. My own backup DVD's are in a fireproof vault, about 20 miles away.

Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear?
OT

you had a really bad time with windows , didn't you ?
for me , i never had a hardrive fail , and windows , never failed on me ...
maybe it failed due to mbr problems , but booting off the install dvd and clicking a restore mbr or something like that fixed it ....
and still , this guide proved to be extremely useful to me .
unfortunately , besides this good guide that gave me courage to do that to my HDD , i did everything to backup partition of windows my windows is ony like 7GB and want to put it to this 4GB ...usb flash drive recently formatted as fat32 and has nothing on it . when i try to make the image it says that the drive is full , but didn't you say in the guide that it will make it approximately in half ? ... i can backup it to a 200GB drive on my harddrive , but ... i am not sure about it's ntfs support ( i have lots of files on that ntfs) so .. what is it happening ...
 
Back
Top Bottom