![]() ![]() ![]() Linux handles drives differently than, say, Windows. We now need to set up Disk 1 so Partimage can save to it. Now that we have the information we need, we can hit q to close less and return use to the command prompt. Disk 0 is the disk containing our operating system (and thus the one we wish to image) and Disk 1 will be where we store the image of Disk 0. The first disk (disk 0) is 25 gigabytes and is known as /dev/sda, and the second disk (disk 1) is 50 gigabytes and is referred to as /dev/sdb. The two bits of information we care most about here are the logical name and the size of each disk. If we add | less to the end of the command (giving us lshw –C disk | less) only a screen’s worth of text will be displayed at a time giving us something like: Well, it looks like most of the information for our first hard disk got scrolled right off the screen. In this instance that will be two hard drives and a CD drive: The command lshw –C disk will list all of the disk drives attached to the computer. Next we have to gather some information about our computer before we can make our image. Once SystemRescueCD is completely loaded you’ll be presented with the following prompt: You could also just let the timer run out and have the same effect. Eventually you’ll be presented with the following prompt to choose a language option: You’ll see a lot of text scroll by as the CD detects hardware and loads services. In general we should be able to simply hit Enter and have things work. Once the disc loads you should be presented with something like this: It’s now time to start the computer using that CD. So we’ve got the computer we’re going to use as the source for our image, we have a device to store the image on, and our SystemRescueCD. Now that all our materials are ready to go we can get down to business. You can use a network share instead or make use of Partimage’s built-in server functionality, but we won’t cover those here today. Our image storage medium is going to be a 50 gigabyte hard drive we’ll connect to each computer as we save and restore the image. Our eventual destination will need to have a total capacity of 25 gigabytes, which we have covered. Thus, anything we use to store the image as it’s created will need to have at least 4 gigabytes free. Our source computer is running Windows XP and consumes a little over 4 gigabytes of its 25 GB capacity. Well, to be precise what’s important is the amount of used space compared with total storage capacity. Of these factors, the hard drive capacity is most important as it will determine what we can use for #3 above. Both have 25 gigabyte hard drives, the same processor, the same underlying chipsets, and so on. In this example our source and destination computers are different devices although both have exactly the same hardware. A storage medium to hold the disk image.A computer to use as our source for the image.Our list of equipment we need is fairly straightforward: There are a couple other items we’ll need, too. You can download the SystemRescueCD at the project’s download page, and if you need help making a bootable disc out of it you can consult these instructions on burning ISO images. For our purposes we’ll use the SystemRescueCD, a custom Linux disc equipped with a variety of applications for data recovery and disk maintenance. Fortunately, there are several versions of Linux that can run completely off of a CD or DVD without any messy installation process. Partimage is a Linux application, and in order to run it you will need some way to run Linux. Unfortunately, Partimage isn’t terribly user friendly, but I think I can help. Options like the free, open source Partimage. Like most software these days you have some options if you’re feeling frugal. You could buy a program like Symatec’s Ghost or Acronis TrueImage, but those cost money. Imagine being able to recover from a hard drive failure in minutes instead of hours or days or easily migrating your programs and data from your old, garbage computer to the shiny new Dell you just picked up for $400 at Wal Mart. Everything is preserved: the operating system, applications, documents, viruses… Large organizations will use disk images to ease deployment of new systems or to simply update old systems, but home users have several good reasons to make these image backups, too. What’s a disk image? Simply stated, it’s an exact copy of the contents of the hard drive of a given computer. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |