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How do I prepare my system for cloning, before using CloneZilla?

Part 1 is here if anyone is interested: Clone or Image a PC

I've got 100 PC's to setup. Is it possible to set up 1 of these PC's with software, drivers, settings, configs, licenses etc, then clone/image exactly the same setup onto the other computers where each computer would have a different computer name, different user name for each application etc?

Basically, I found that I cannot use sysprep to prepare the system for cloning with CloneZilla. This is because sysprep pulls the OEM key out of the image from Dell computers. We have Dell computers.

So, as all the 100 computers are identical, how do I prepare the system for cloning, before using CloneZilla?

Why Clonezilla doesn't recognize RAID0 drives - and how to fix it?

I have a not-so-recent HP desktop PC (model# m9510f, Q8200 CPU - I think it was manufactured in early 2009 sometime, because it still had Vista 64-bit).

I've set it up with a pair of 500GB drives that I want to run in RAID0 striped mode (for higher performance and lower reliability). I've successfully setup the RAID in the BIOS, and it is recognized at boot time.

Only problem is, Clonezilla won't recognize the RAID0, so I can't very well restore the OS. I could just reinstall from the recovery disks, but then I suppose I also won't be able to make Clonezilla backups either. Clonezilla only sees the individual drives.

What's the best way to get around this issue?

Thanks

Clonezilla with an old Windows 98 machine

I need to backup an old desktop PC running Windows 98. It has one harddrive which is very old.

• Is it possible to run CloneZilla on an old windows 98 machine?
• Is it possible that CloneZilla produce damage on the old hard drive because of the long read access on the old disk (It will be fatal if the disk (or the content on the disk) will be damaged.)
• Where can I store the disk image created by CloneZilla. I think it could be problem to use new big USB-devices on the old windows 98 machine.

Clonezilla disk to disk clone on a dual boot ubuntu karmic & XP setup - cannot open '/boot/grub/device.map'

I just tried to clone a failing existing boot drive for a dual boot system with Ubuntu karmic and Windows XP installed using Clonezilla. The cloning worked fine right up until the end when I got the following error:

Running: grub-install --no floppy --root-directory=/tmp/hd_img.twABYW /dev/sdb
grub-probe: error: Cannot open '/boot/grub/device.map'
/usr/sbin/grub-install:line 374: [: =: unary operator expected

What's my next step?

I imagine I need to somehow rebuild my boot record for Windows and Ubuntu and edit grub.

Clonezilla 2tb disk used 20gb to 16gb usb

I am pretty new to Clonzilla, so I have 2tb hdd which has fresh os install currently used space is 18.1Gb. Just a 10 minute ago I create backup with clonezilla to a 16gb flashdisk and it just takes 6.8 of place.

1. Am I doing something wrong I just wanted to test and it completed with no error

2. I use save disk image option

3. If what I have done is wrong what should be the proper way? (I was thinking to partition used area and just backup this partition using compression?)

4. There is a big documentation I know but the small advice will be valuable that I wonder if I can use this backed up image after I format the disk?

Booting Clonezilla from a live USB on a MacBook running Ubuntu

I have Ubuntu 10.04 running on a MacBook Pro 5.5. It's using rEFIt to allow Ubuntu to boot via GRUB despite the Mac's EFI. For backup purposes, I'd like to clone it's hard drive using Clonezilla. I followed the instructions from the official Clonezilla website to create a live USB using the Clonezilla ISO and Tuxboot, however booting the Mac while the live USB is attached has no effect. Holding down the Option key during booting shows no additional drives, and bringing up the rEFIt screens also shows only the Ubuntu partition, and the original Mac OS X partition.

How do I make a live Clonezilla media that's bootable from a Mac running Linux?

How can I join non-consecutive partitions on internal hard disk?

I recently installed a new, larger hard disk in my PC at work (the office wouldn't spring for an upgrade for my 75GB disk, so I brought my own 2TB disk in from home). I managed to clone the original drive using CloneZilla, but now I have a 75GB partition on my new drive, followed by a 300MB partition, followed by a 1794.65GB of unallocated space. What I want is to add the unallocated space to the 75GB partition, thereby maximizing my C: drive.

However, when I right-click on the C: partition, the option to "Extend Volume" is grayed out. How do I get all my fancy new extra space to be part of my C: drive? I also tried booting with GParted, but I get the same deal - cannot adjust the C: drive because there's no contiguous space.

Strange booting issue?

I have a laptop that I resized its partition to only fit the data. After that I had about `700 MB of free space left. Computer booted and it worked fine. I tried it a couple more times and it was fine. I thought it was good to go in regards to cloning so I proceeded to image the drive with Clonezilla on default settings.

After that, I formatted the drive and attempted to restore the image (using all default options) to verify it. Well, this is where my problem resides: when I try to boot, I just get that little blinking cursor at the top left.

What I tried:

• I went into my Windows 7 DVD disk and tried the Startup repair. It said that it was successful in repairing it, but still had the same problem. Tried it 5 more times, to no avail.
• Tried bootrec /fixboot, /fixmbr, /rebuildbcd. Still nothing.
• Tried bootsect /nt60 sys /mbr. Can u guess, yea same thing?
• Tried setting the partition to "Active" in diskpart.
• Tried deleting the "boot" folder and even "bootmgr" and replacing them from the DVD.

Luckily, I have Hiren's BootCD on my USB and booted into it. I selected the "Boot from Windows 7/Vista (bootmgr)" option and it worked. The image was successfully booted. It booted off the bootmgr in Hiren's BootCD. It still worked but I need the bootmgr to work without the assistance of the BootCD.

How the hell do I fix this mess?

Update:

I found the solution. I was just sitting down, studying for my exams when an idea popped in my head. What if I delete all BCD entries manually then add a fresh one after? Well that's what I did.

1. Booted into installation DVD
2. Went into command prompt
3. Typed bcdedit /enum
4. Ran bcdedit /deletevalue (whatever value it was) for each value in the BCD
5. Ran bootrec /scanos and verified that my OS was located
6. Finally, ran bootrec /rebuildbcd
7. And the computer boots up fine.

HP Recovery partition not accessable after repartitioning

I have HP Laptop that came with preinstalled Win 7. It actually had 4 primary partitions:

• 200 MB System partition that is not visible in Windows
• C: partition
• HP_Recovery partition of about 15 GB
• HP_Tools partition of about 5 GB

I wanted to add additional D: partition for data, which was not possible since all existing partitions were primary. What I did was:

1. Made an image of HP_Tools partition with Clonezilla
2. Deleted HP_Tools partition with GParted
3. Created new Extended partition with GParted
4. Copied existing Primary partition HP_Recovery inside Extended partition, thus creating a new Logical partition (again with GParted)
5. I deleted original Primary partition HP_Recovery with GParted
6. I created 6GB empty Logical partition HP_Tools with GParted
7. I created partition D: and arranged sizes in GParted

I rebooted into Windows, there was a standard CHKDSK screen, after which Win 7 booted w/o problems.

However, when I tried starting Repair Your Computer at the startup menu, and I got the 0xc0000225 Error code and a message: The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt.

I tried this solution: Using GParted to Resize Your Windows 7 or Vista Partition, no success.

I also tried solving the problem with BCDEasy, manually pointing to *.wim file. But with BCDEasy I can only add a new entry (there's no entry for Repair Your Computer option). Either way, when I try this solution I get 0xc0000017 Error: Ramdisk device creation failed due to insufficient memory

Anyone have an idea? I'm refusing to give up :) since I believe I only need to point to the correct disk/file to get this working. But I just don't see how.

Cloned CentOS not booting up

I recently cloned a CentOS6 environment from 1TB HDD and intended to restore its image to a 4 TB space. I used Clonezilla for this.

The clone went successful, but after that when I tried to restore the cloned-image to the new hard disk space, the system is not booting up. The restoration process went successful but still the system says no booting point found.

I check online, but people who had faced that same issue was mostly dealing with Windows system, that got recovered from Windows CD. For me, I am using CentOS6. I don't have that option. What strategy should I adopt so that I can boot up the backed up enviornment into the new system?

Clonezilla extreme time consumption

First time using Clonezilla. I need to clone 500GB disk, 16MB cache, to another which is exactly the same type. Source disk is in SATA1, destination Disk is in SATA0. Source disk is containing Win7 64bit in NTFS. No other filesystems. One partition (visible).

Because the source disk, according to S.M.A.R.T. data, contains 199 unrecoverable sectors, I started sector-by-sector with -recover option enabled in expert mode.

The problem is, recovery is running right now for 18(!) hours. Screen is constantly refreshing, disks are making working noise.

Screen looks like this:

And is nonstop refreshing and the counting in far left is rising.

So my question is: Is this completely broken process which I should cancel, or is this normal behaviour?

Thank you for your advices.

EDIT: I found out that this screen is simply repeating. It always shows sector 6543957. Sorry I did not notice this earlyier. So apparently Clonezilla got stuck at some point. I really would like to clone this disk. What now? :-)

Setting up VirtualBox guest for PXE boot

I'm having an issue getting VirtualBox to boot from the network. I have a Server 2k8 installed and setup and acting as AD DS, DNS, DHCP and WDS. I have two adapter on the server, one of which I have setup as a static IP the one I'm using to hand out IPs to some of the other guest VMs and its setup as a 192.168.2 address.

I have a couple guest VMs that I'm not sure if I'm setting up the adapters on them right or not. The static IP adapter on the server is adapter #2 and it's set to bridge, Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop and is set to Allow All. Now on some of the guests I have those adapters setup the same but when I try to boot from LAN it either gives me a No boot medium found. System Halted! message or it will get a 192.168.1 address.

I have a clonezilla.iso attached to the guest VMs and when I choose to Network Boot from iPXE from the list of options it presents it finds the 192.168.2 server and I'm able to press F12 and my Windows 7 image will load up and I'm able to install it. On the guest VMs I've tried setting the adapters to PCnet II and PCnet III and it will show the DHCP server IP and the guest IP and they're getting a 192.168.2 address but then it says No file found and sticks on the No bootable medium found. System halted!

Could someone help me out and see where I might be messing up?

Can Clonezilla clone a computer that is running live over a network? Can anything?

I saw a similar but not duplicate question. Is it possible to use Clonezilla to clone a computer over the network? Now I have to boot into the CD like always, but wondered if it could be done. If it can't what could I use do to it? These are all separate machines. If anything these will work I have access to:

Anything Open Source VMWare Norton Ghost Not sure what else I could use.

edit: The computers I am cloning are Windows 7.

Which way can I avoid Dropbox syncing older files when restoring a CloneZilla image?

Is there a way to avoid Dropbox Syncing older files back to my account when restoring a CloneZilla system image?

Clonezilla disk to image speed decreasing over time

I am actually backing my whole 2tb disk using Clonezilla disk-to-image option.

I don't use any encryption or anything that I know that could slow down the process, and yet, Clonezilla tells me that there is 72 hours remaining at a speed of 400MB/min.

When I started it, Clonezilla told me that it would take 8 hours at 3gb/min but that speed just kept decreasing over time. Now one hour after the start of the copy, I am at 400mb/min and it keep decreasing. Is it normal ?

I am using Clonezilla on a bootable USB Key and the external hard drive receiving the copy image is new and healthy (using usb3 too). The only bad point I can think of is that the disk I am copying is usually a bit slow on my Windows (something is wrong with it, I don't know what) but still it shouldn't be THAT slow (and doesn't explain why it started at 3gb/min).

Is there anything I can do to speed up the process? Is it safe to reboot my computer during the copy and try again? Should I even bother trying again?

Edit:

Ok, 10 minutes after my question it is now at 84 hours. I just want to know if it is safe to shut it down because I am not going to wait the whole week for that.