Best way to clone/restore HDD? (like Norton Ghost)

[nim108]

I am looking to use TC as a automated recovery type tool. Basically, user would choose to boot into TC, then if a USB is plugged in containing a ghost type image of the drive (it would contain a unique UUID that udev rules would detect and only then would it start imaging), it would restore the entire hard drive. Now my problem is finding a utility like Ghost for Linux that will do the imaging. The best part about Ghost is that 1) it does a file-by-file copy so it's very fast and the resulting compressed image is small and 2) it dynamically resizes the drive so if you are imaging a 10 GB drive onto a 20 GB drive, it will image the drive and then resize it automatically, fixing the partition table if necessary. dd is obviously not an option for this reason, it copies every sector of the drive and it does not have the ability to dynamically resize so if for some reason the destination drive is even 1 byte smaller than the source, it will fail. partimage has similar issues. CloneZilla is the only tool for Linux that I've seen powerful enough to do something like this, but it's obviously it's own distro and not able to be integrated into TC. Since CloneZilla is just a collection of low level tools though, anyone know how it actually clones a hard drive? What would be the best way to do something like this? I've been searching for an answer on this for years and still have not found a solid solution. Til this day, we use an ancient version of Ghost because it images whatever we need flawlessly, but we'd like to get away from proprietary tools and DOS and head towards an open source solution. Thanks.

[Rich]

Hi nim108
According to this there are Linux versions of Symantec Ghost:
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,12613.msg69577.html#msg69577
This might also be of some interest:
http://redkrieg.com/2007/03/19/ghost-4-linux-complete-guide-to-imaging/

[AbNoRMiS]

may will be useful partclone which is in the repo?

[nim108]

Hi nim108
According to this there are Linux versions of Symantec Ghost:
http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,12613.msg69577.html#msg69577
This might also be of some interest:
http://redkrieg.com/2007/03/19/ghost-4-linux-complete-guide-to-imaging/

Interesting, but regardless, we want to move away from licensed software to something more open source. G4L is a CD based solution, so I'm not sure how easily it can be integrated into TC. I was wondering if there was anything available natively to Linux which would do the same thing as Ghost.

may will be useful partclone which is in the repo?

I believe partclone only works on partitions, not the entire hard drive, though it is possible to manually create the partitions with something like fdisk and then image the partitions one by one. I will research this, thanks.

Any other ideas?

[AbNoRMiS]

Interesting, but regardless, we want to move away from licensed software to something more open source. G4L is a CD based solution, so I'm not sure how easily it can be integrated into TC. It also is not maintained anymore. I was wondering if there was anything available natively to Linux which would do the same thing as Ghost.

seems to me that clonezilla licensed under gnu gpl 2.0
but i can not find where to get its source for build for tc
except heavyweight sources of debian livecd from sourceforge

I believe partclone only works on partitions, not the entire hard drive, though it is possible to manually create the partitions with something like fdisk and then image the partitions one by one. I will research this, thanks.

Any other ideas?

usually i use gparted for create and resize partitions
but confess that i most often use acronis
because it resizes partitions much faster

[curaga]

If you search the fora, one user set up a PXE-booted TC to use the Ghost linux binaries, I recall.

edit: Heh, the link was already posted. NVM

[Rich]

Hi nim108

G4L is a CD based solution, so I'm not sure how easily it can be integrated into TC.

From what I've read, G4L is mostly scripts and one custom binary. Here are a couple of links that talk about
using G4L with a different distro:
http://bhavesh.freeshell.org/cloninghd.html
http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l/forums/forum/408763/topic/4043553

[nim108]

Thanks Rich. Actually I may have found something that works as well, it's called FSArchiver (http://www.fsarchiver.org/Main_Page) and by its description, it seems to do exactly what I'm looking for. I will test it and report back here in case someone else is looking for this same functionality.

[Rich]

Hi nim108
You of course saw that  fsarchiver.tcz  is in the repository.

[ztealmax]

Other then that clonezilla is something simular to Ghost, works like a sharm but its a standalone dist i think