This article introduces a pair of excellent, free imaging software solutions that you can use to backup your

complete systems.

Introduction - what is imaging?

Backing up your system (and documents) is more than just copying a lot of files to another location.
Here's an example for you. Let's say you want to backup your operating system, Windows, for example. So, you
copy every single file on the drive C: to an external device and then copy the contents to a hard disk on another
machine. And then you try to boot the other machine.
Nothing will happen. The other system will not be bootable, even though you have copied just about any file
you can see and access.
This is because operating systems do not work the way we perceive them. We see files, but these files are only
meaningful to a file system that can read and interpret them. For example, the NTFS file structure is only useful
to systems that can read this file system, like Windows, Mac and some Linux distributions. An old DOS
machine cannot read a hard disk formatted with NTFS, for instance.
However, beneath the file system, resides the most basic structure of any device - disk sectors. These are actual,
physical parcels containing the data, regardless of the file system used. If this structure is mirrored to another
device, it is possible to create an exact clone. Any operating system that exists on the device will not know any
difference.
This is what imaging is all about.
Imaging is a process during which the device structure and the entire contents are copied, sector by sector to a
backup file called image.
If you take the image and extract it to a device, overriding any existing, previous structure, you will have
created a perfect copy of the imaged system, the way it was the moment the image was taken.
This grants computer users the ability to not only save the actual files, but the actual status of a device, be it a
hard disk, a partition or any other, frozen in time at the moment it was created. These temporal snapshots can
then be restored at later times, allowing the users to undo changes to their devices (and the relevant operating
systems). This opens a huge window of opportunity and flexibility, in regard to backup, testing and disaster
recovery.
Any serious computer user will deploy some sort of imaging software in his/her arsenal and use them
periodically, to backup their operating system and also restore them, if needed.
I can give you a personal example. In the last 3 years, I have backed up my systems at least 200 times and
restored some of them about 20-30 times, for various reasons, mainly software testing. Imagine that I had to
reinstall the systems instead of image-restoring them every time. Imagine the time cost, the long hours needed
to reinstall everything and configure the applications, to say nothing of the additional nuisance the Windows
operating system poses with its Activation policy.
Unfortunately, most imaging software products cost a lot of money. Furthermore, since imaging is such an
important and crucial procedure, you cannot risk the chance of using a second-hand imaging software. Luckily,

there are two excellent free programs that offer the reliability and quality that you require - CloneZilla and
PartImage.
Both these programs are relatively easy to use, if not the easiest. On the other hand, they are fast, reliable and
very much free. They will also work with practically any filesystem, including Windows NTFS.
In this article, I will reach you how to use them to backup your system, demonstrating the use of each in rich
detail. I will use CloneZilla to backup an Ubuntu station and then I will use PartImage to backup a Windows
machine.

Requirements
Both of these programs require that you be able to burn ISO files to CD/DVD, boot from a live CD and in
general, understand the Linux notation of hard drives and partitions - and, of course, know what hard disks and
partitions are. There is also some use of the command line involved.
If you're not ready for this, maybe CloneZilla and PartImage are not for you. Just be aware that many payware
imaging solutions also require some knowledge of the hardware terminology. It is definitely worth spending
some time reading and learning how to master this area.
But do not let this deter you. The programs ARE rather simple - and you have my tutorial to guide you, step by
step. Furthermore, here's a list of several other articles I have written, which can help you prepare for the task at
hand.
Installing SUSE Linux - Full tutorial
Installing (K)ubuntu Linux - Full tutorial
Dual booting - Windows & Linux
Highly useful Linux commands & configurations

CloneZilla
Homepage
CloneZilla is a fast, light imaging software that runs from a CD. It is well suited for desktop use, as well as
massive deployment in server environment.
CloneZilla is rather simple to use. Let's demonstrate.
First, download the ISO and burn it to CD/DVD. Next, choose a computer that you want to test it on and boot
from the CD on that machine. For testing purposes, this can also be a virtual machine, in case you're afraid to
tamper with your real system.
The boot menu offers you to launch the application in a number of graphic modes, switch to the local hard disks
and boot from them, boot from the network, run a memory test, or boot into FreeDOS. We'll choose the first
option.

Next, choose your language and keyboard map.

Confirm your choice:

Start CloneZilla:

First, you need to decide whether you wish to image or clone your system. The difference is in the output.
Imaging results in a file being created. Cloning results in a target drive / partition being rewritten during the
cloning process - for instance, this is useful if you have bought a new hard disk and want to use it instead of the
old one. However, for now, we just wish to image our system.

Now, we need to mount a local partition that will be our target. We will create the image and save it to this
partition.

Before we do that, let us understand what we have here. Our system is Ubuntu, with three partitions, root, home
and swap. root is a primary partition, hence the notation hda1. The second partition is hda2, which is the
extended partition, inside which numerous logical partitions can reside. Logical partitions begin with the
notation hda5 (or sda5 for SCSI disks), because the first four numbers are reserved for primary partitions. Swap
is our hda5.
root (/)
hda1
Extended partition
hda2
swap
hda5
home (/home)
hda6
Now, hda6 is thus the second logical partition - and it is the home partition of our Ubuntu system. This is where
we will save the image of the root partition.

Please notice the last entry in the image above. /dev/hda6 is the target partition that we mounted.
Now, you need to decide what you want to do, backup or restore your system. The option savedisk allows you
to backup the entire hard disk. The option restoredisk allows you to restore an image of an entire hard disk. The
third option, saveparts, allows you to backup only individual partitions. And accordingly, restoreparts allows
you to restore individual partitions.
We wish to backup individual partitions.

Some advanced options, no need to tamper with:

Choose the compression:

Choose the name for the image:

Next, you need to select the source partition - the one we want to image. This is our root, hda1. Please note that
hda6 is no longer available. This is because mounted partitions cannot be imaged. They need to be unmounted.
CloneZilla automatically removes mounted partitions from the menu.

You are ready to image.

Confirm your choice:

The imaging process will now begin. It takes only about 4-5 minutes for a typical Ubuntu installation.

After the imaging process is done, you will be taken to a console. You'll have the choice to restart CloneZilla
again and create another image, power off the machine or reboot.

Now, let's boot into Ubuntu. Indeed, here's our image. Job done (as the peasant Orc in Warcraft likes to say)!

PartImage
Homepage
PartImage is slightly more difficult than CloneZilla. This is because some of the operations that CloneZilla does
automatically need to be performed manually. Nevertheless, it is fast and reliable and should be considered
when weighing out imaging solutions.
PartImage comes bundled as a part of numerous Linux distribution. One of the best tools to have - and which
includes PartImage - is the SystemRescueCD, a bootable Linux live CD that specializes in diagnosis, repair and
recovery of crashed systems.
You can read more about SystemRescueCD in my article A (cool) list of Linux tool. Among many other useful
tools, SystemRescueCD also includes GParted, an excellent disk partitioning tool, TestDisk, a great tool for
recovering lost partitions and data.
So let's begin using PartImage. We will boot off the SystemRescueCD live CD.

Hit Enter to continue. After a few moments, the system will boot. By default, SystemRescueCD boots into the
command-line mode. But don't worry. Type startx into the console and hit Enter. You will reach the desktop
shortly.

Now, before we start using PartImage, let us review our setup. We want to backup a Windows XP C: drive to
another partition (in this case, E:). Since SystemRescueCD is a Linux tool, it will use the Linux notation for the
partitions. The Windows C: drive must be a primary partition - and it will most likely be the first, thus it will be
either hda1 or sda1.
Additional Windows partitions are usually logical (if created when installing Windows XP). Therefore, they will
be marked hda6, hda7 (or sda6, sda7) etc.
But why guess? Let's check.
As we've said earlier, SystemRescueCD comes with some handy tools, including a powerful partitioning
program, GParted. Let's power it up and examine our layout.

Here, we can see our partitions. sda1 is our Windows C:. We will back it up to sda5, because it has most space.

If you have noticed a warning earlier, before typing startx, there are two things we must do before we can use
PartImage.
We must mount our target partition, so we can save the image to it.
1. Since our target partition is formatted as NTFS, we will have to use a special driver, called NTFS-3g,
which allows Linux systems to read and write to NTFS partitions. We must do this manually, from the
command line.
Actually, this is the only difficult part of the whole thing.
Let's first create a mount point:
mkdir /mnt/win-backup
Then, we need to mount the sda5:
ntfs-3g /dev/sda5 /mnt/win-backup -o force
This is what it looks like:

And checking through GParted, we can see sda5 is now mounted.

Now, start PartImage:

First, we need to select the source partition (sda1) and give the name to our image. In our case, it will be:
/mnt/win-backup/windows-c-backup-2008-08-21

Press F5 to continue. Next, we need to select some advanced options. There's no need to change anything. The
default settings are good enough. The only thing you may want to change is whether you wish to split the image
into smaller files, so they can fit onto CDs. Use the arrow keys to navigate.

Add comments, if necessary:

You will be warned that NTFS support is experimental. Don't worry, everything will work fine.

You will be presented with some info about the NTFS-formatted partition you're about to image.

And the actual imaging process will begin. It takes about 5 minutes for a 1GB Windows XP installation, but this
is slower than the results you'll have with Linux filesystems. Even so, PartImage is somewhat slower than
CloneZilla.

After you're done, reboot into Windows. Indeed, everything looks good. The image footprint is approx. 40% of
the original size (400MB).

Job done.

Conclusion
CloneZilla and PartImage are excellent products, if you are willing to spend the extra 5 minutes learning the
few basic principles that you require to use them. On the other hand, they cost nothing, are reliable and efficient,
and will provide you with an efficient backup-and-restore solution, for both Windows and Linux systems.
Well, have a good day.