(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Have many of you used it successfully?
I know I have downloaded it and then some how
failed to get to use it. I guess the learning curve
too steep? Or one need a CD/DVD drive and it
work less good from a USB?

I got reminded of it reading on DW comments.

98 • RE: #89 #71 Live CD being a different, and often inferior experience (by Ron on 2012-01-11 21:09:11 GMT from United States)
"I would never consider installing it on my main computer as I am not sure that my knowledge level would allow me to correct the potential"

You would do well to learn the 'Clonezilla' software program. It's available on a CD. It takes a little time to learn, and it must be used properly, but it is a life saver after a super crash or drive failure (it can and does happen alas).

Work Clonezilla through a test system to make sure you have it right and that you do not run into some surprises if and when its really needed. Then, you can clone your entire system/drive and play all you want and still come back exactly as you left things.

Ron

I guess it is his warning that one really have to know what
one are doing to get it to work reliably and I usually do screw up anything I touch.

So I would need to test on another computer and I am lazy

Ooops I now know why I did not keep the downloaded iso?
It is way over my ability to use.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distri ... clonezilla

Clonezilla Live is a Debian-based live CD containing Clonezilla, a partition and disk cloning software similar to Norton Ghost. It saves and restores only used blocks in hard drive.

Does there exist some other such programs or whatever
that do the same thing?

I have used Clonzilla many times and I cannot say how many times it has saved me from complete disaster. It can back up partitions or entire disk drives by making an image file of what you choose to back up. When you restore the lost or corrupted partition or disk it over writes the data with the saved image file.

I use Ubuntu 10.4LTS on my desktop and I make a back up monthly of my hard disk. When I have gotten into trouble I have been able to restore my system back to the time I saved an image and thus saved a massive headache.

I use Puppy on an old IBM Thinkpad A21. With Puppy, I typically back up my save file on a monthly basis and this does the same thing. I see no need to use Clonzilla for Puppy.

The program is easy to use if you follow the screen prompts carefully. I have found that the default selections work fine, and as I gained experience I was able to determine what the other selections would do sometimes by trial and error.

aen, so probably a good application then for backing up a full install of Puppy.

Smokey01, I am not an expert but there seem to be no reason why it would not work that I can see. If you have Puppy installed in a separate partition you would simply back up that partition and restore it when needed.

If Puppy occupies your entire hard disk it should do the same thing it does with my Ubuntu installation. The only area I am leery of in this case would be how it restores an MBR or Grub because when I watch what it does at the end of a restore or save, it is seems to be using the existing files.

I have done one heroic rescue to the one young ladys broken hdd and windows vista installation.
Clonezilla was the only partition cloner which managed to clone the acer laptop hdd hidden partition where the vista factory default installation folder is. That partition was intact, hdd was really broken otherwise. The lady also had about 6000 downloaded songs and about 130 trojans on her hdd. I installed new hdd restored the vista installation partition (acer pqservice partition) and then i booted it and vista installation started.
Then I teached the young lady how not download music files and how to check that they are clean. I made her really happy and her parents also.
Clonezilla is the winner.

pemasu is the Winner too.

Chris.

First aen, Smokey, pemasu thanks for the kind feedback!

Jay! pemasu that was a good thing to read.
That many Trojans? I've downloaded from Youtube
only hope them have no Trojans at all.

You should have told her to change the password to her Bank and other such important that they can abuse

Guys so Clonezilla is really good then.

So suppose I have an USB HDD and then tell CZ to do the
backup to that one from the internal HDD on my Netbook.

Can then CloneZilla be booted from that USB? or
does one need it to be on another USB due to some
internal coding it has to be different patitions or something?

One way to install it would be to dd from the iso to the usb flash? I did that with Pussy Linux and it worked well.

So why would that not work with CZ?

nooby - I am not sure I completely understand your question but here goes anyway.

I use Clonzilla only as a live CD that I burned after downloading the .iso file. It s not permanently installed on any hard disk or USB drive, and I believe it was intended to work this way so that it can shut down the HD it needs to back up.

When I back up my desktop HD, I boot with the CZ in my CD drive and follow the prompts. After some preliminary settings, it asks you to choose where you want to save the new backup image and I choose a 16 gig USB drive. It takes about 30 minutes for it to copy approx. 10 gigs (my System) off of my 320gig HD and write the backup image.

When I restore the system, I again boot from the live CZ disk, and go through the prompts to restore the HD. It takes approx. 6-7 minutes for CZ to restore the HD and I am back in business. I like to fool around on my system, and occasionally mess it up, but CZ has worked flawlessly for me in restoring my system since i started using it in early 2009. It gives you plenty of warning about what it is about to do, like completely over write your hard drive with the new image and I find the prompts easy to follow.

Hope this helps you.

Yes thanks. I will read on their site if it works as good
using only USB and not CD because the Netbook have
no such optical reader/writer.

pemasu wrote: Clonezilla is the winner.

Agreed. Another satisfied Clonezilla user here.

James did you also use a CD or DVD?
do you know if it works from a Flash drive USB?

nooby wrote:James did you also use a CD or DVD?
do you know if it works from a Flash drive USB?

I just run Clonezilla from a live cd. As far as I know it does work running from a usb flash drive.

Clonezilla live allows you to use CD/DVD or USB flash drive to boot and run clonezilla

http://www.clonezilla.org/

Ah yes right in front of my eyes so typical me to miss that.
Thanks!

I boot clonezilla from cd. I have had good results cloning one partitaion to another of the same size, and cloning one hdd to another also of the same size, including all partitions on the source drive. I haven't tried saving to an image, or different size partitiions and drives. It seems to work very well and is fairly straight forward.
Cheers

Just finished using Clonezilla to clone my a 250 Gb sata drive(2 partitions) onto a new 1 Tb drive.About 20 minutes.Then unhooked the old source drive and using the new larger drive.Actually was much faster than I was expecting.