What's The Best Alternative To Norton Ghost?

Linux Support
1

Currently I use Norton Ghostsuite for creating images of hard drives as its the one I am most familiar with. Now that I’m starting to learn about Linux I was wondering what the best alternative to Ghost is?

2

Hi

You could try Clonezilla http://clonezilla.org/
In the past I have used (Clonezilla Live) a few times and had no problems

You can also look at Partimage http://www.partimage.org/ although never used it

3

Listen to SeZo :wink: … +1 for Clonezilla.

[EDIT]

I now find myself using/recommending Redo Backup & Recovery (LiveCD):
http://redobackup.org/
more than Clonezilla … Redo is more user friendly (GUI), and will create a LiveUSB of itself … or you can just use Unetbootin to bung it on a USB stick in the first place if you don’t have an optical drive … all covered here:
http://redobackup.org/download.php

If you see the features page:
http://redobackup.org/features.php
it can also backup and restore easily to/from network shares :wink:

–

4

Clonezilla it is then!

I use the Enterprise version of Norton Ghost which means I can Ghost across our network to multiple computers.

Can you do this with Clonezilla, if so is it easy to set up?

Thanks. :slight_smile:

5

I am no expert in this but you could try the server edition:
http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-SE.php :slight_smile:

6

Hi! I’ve read all of that and understand that after installing Linux I then install/configure DRBL but it doesnt mention the actual installation of Clonezilla. It keeps talking about Clonezilla SE (Server Edition) but only offers a download of Clonezilla Live - is this one in the same thing or am I missing something?

As I’m typing this I’m installing Linux on what is (hopefully) going to be our/my Clonezilla computer, just need to sort out DRBL and then get Clonezilla SE on it. :slight_smile:

7

Does sort of depend “why” you want to clone the hard drive, there are lots of easy methods …

For a complete “raw” copy, how about;

dd if=/dev/sda bs=1M | pv -petra -s `blockdev --getsize64 /dev/sda` -L50m | ssh root@target "dd of=/tmp/image.img bs=1M"

Assumes drive you want to copy is /dev/sda, destination machine is target and that you have a gigEthernet network.
… it’ll even give you a progress bar, eta, timer etc … :slight_smile:

[you may need to do sudo apt-get install pv first] … if you want to work while it’s in progress, you may want to tune the 50m down a little …

8

The reason we clone hard disks is to create an image that we can them put on new computers that we buy. It’s so much easier to install the OS and applications on one computer, create an image and then when we buy a new computer instead of spending a couple of hours getting all the software installed we can just put the image on.

Just to clarify, I’m talking about using Clonezilla instead of Norton/Symantec Ghost to create images of Windows PC’s.

:slight_smile:

9

Ok, well before I say “why are you asking a Windows question here” ( :-X ) , this is for making disk images, the OS is irrelevant, however it goes without saying that any advice I’m going to give will relate to programs running on Linux.

So, what you need is a Linux booted computer (!) with either a saved Windows image, or a second hard drive.
Then either “another” blank hard drive, or a second computer.

For another blank hard drive, let’s assume your device is on /dev/sdb and your windows image is /home/user/windows.img;

dd if=/home/user/windows.img of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

I’m pretty sure this is easier than trying to use Norton Ghost …

For the two machine method, boot the second machine from an Ubuntu boot disk, select “try”, run a shell, “apt-get install openssh-server”, then use the command from the previous post … :slight_smile: