• • DebIan? users can use apt-get, for the application partimage.

• • Debian users can use apt-get, for the application partimage.

Before We Go

image you are restoring. Press OK, and let it rip. I never tell folks to practice, on a bring-home-the-bacon box.

image you are restoring. Press F5, and let it rip.

Before We Go

I never tell folks to practice, on a bring-home-the-bacon box.

As a courtesy, please discuss this topic in DiskImagingPresentationFeedback.

• • This is pretty important, because keeping it off the archived PC lowers the likelyhood of your backup going down with the ship. Any image under 700 MB can easily go on a CD. This might screw you though, as I will demonstrate, on tomorrow's show.

• • This is pretty important, because keeping it off the archived PC lowers the likelyhood of your backup going down with the ship. Any image under 700 MB can easily go on a CD.I like this way of going things, altough you might want to consider the following tale, if you use KnoppiX, to restore.

Regroup, and reconvene tomorrow.

This is already a great amount of info. Take some time to follow the links, on the previous slides, and post any comments you have about the basic concepts I've covered. We'll get into the real mechanics tomorrow.

Sad Sad Day

Here the story. I made an archive of a 2 gig drive, that took up 4 CD's. One day, after a power failure, my disk freaked out. No problem, I reboot into Knoppix,and got ready to restore. Then I realized, that I my only CD-ROM was being hogged by KnoppiX, and I had no way to load my archive images. Yikes! Oh well, I bought an another one, and stuck it in the extra bay. After that, all was well again, except for feeling a little silly.

Making It Happen

Okay, so you've read about how to backup a partition table, and even a master boot record. Great, the next step is actually using Partition Image. Truth told the application is easy, and reletively intuitive. There are a couple of notes, that will serve you well, to know.

The Name Game

First, when you do the backup, you must give the image file a name. No big deal, until you restore it. See, the software assumes that it may run out of space, before it finishes, and automatically breaks archives up, should this happen. As a result, after the archiving process, your file will have a trailing .000 extension attached to it, since it is the first chunk. So,if you have plenty of space, and this is the only chunk, you get stuck with this goofy .000, at the end.

End result: When you type the name of the partition you are resurrecting, forgetting to type the extension will make the application poop out. At least now you'll know why, and just retype it. Of course, for advanced users, scripting the restoration avoids this issue, but I digress.

Manic Compression

Next, when you reach the second menu page, with all the archiving options, I strongly reccomend not using bzip compression. Normally, Partition Image can restores your master boot record, along with the first partition, but bzip compression freaks out, and can mangle it. IF you have this issue, it's not a big deal, since you backed up the partition table, and the master boot record, right?

Gzip compression works fine, for me, and is friendly with the MBR. There's a couple of extra options that I mark as follows:

• Exit, on complete
• Split after Drive is Full

Before We Go

Last, I enter a comment detailing the type of install I'm archiving. It's not necessary, but can help give a better idea, of what's on the image you are restoring. Press OK, and let it rip. I never tell folks to practice, on a bring-home-the-bacon box.

Get an old hard drive, and play with that until you are comfortable, with the guts of Partition Image. I use it all the time make system restoration disks and hard drive image backups, of all manner of file sysyems. Consult the docs, to see which are supported.

Wrap-Up

Well, that about it! I have to fix some typos, but you should be able to get this application working for you, without too many hassles. Feel free to post comments, question, and stories fron the "battle field". Some of the more curious readers may have seen the network-based application of Partition Image, floating around the documentation. If you use it, share your experience, by posting some highlights, here.

See you, next time,

http://www.partimage.org

Slide 1: Using Partition Image

by Aaron Estrada

Email lugnut@houston.rr.com

New Horizons

One of the great newbie joys, is the satifaction of a successful, functional installation. Much effort takes place in this first big step, but often overlooked, is the importance of an immediately generated backup.

Skipping this step results in wasted time re-installling, and frustration. Nothing is perfect, and backups are just part of good computing habits.

Partition Image, is an open-source tool, that allows you to create such an archive, suitable for that big computing hiccup.

Tell Me More

Partition Image is software that clones your hard disk, making an identical, bit-for-bit copy of any/all partitions you choose. It then stores the copy, or image, in a file. This is similar to commercial applications like Ghost, which you may be familiar with. This is the file you use to restore your partition.

Partition Image has a few nice features.

• It only copies the used portions of the drive. Let's say you have a 20 GB root partition, but only used 500 MB. Your image will only be 500 MB, in size.
• It can compress with great efficiency. The above example can be crammed down to 250 MB.
• Note Compression of images relies more heavily on CPU power. This isn't as important on new PC's, but something to consider on that sub-Pentium II machine.

The Toolbox

After using this application, a bit, I have found that with some cursory information, and reasonably simple prep, one can get going quickly with this application. Here are some of the most important ones, before actually running it:

• Getting the software
  • DebIan? users can use apt-get, for the application partimage.
  • KnoppiX users already have the application built-in. Service with a Smile.
  • RPM-based distros, like RedHat and ManDrake, can get it from the download section, on Partition Image's website, or using their respective tools, and repositories.
  • Note Obviously, the low-fat way to do it, is to use that KnoppiX CD you probably already love, and that's what I do.
• Backing up your partition table.
  • When recovering from disk failure, sometimes the partition table goes to the crapper. Unfortunately, recovering a partiton won't do any good, if the partition table is fried. The same can be said for your master boot record. If these terms are foreign, rest assured that noting them, and backing them up is more important than quoting Webster's definition of them.
  • The Partition Image team knows all about this, and includes a simple step-by-step guide, on accomplishing this.
• Deciding where to put the archive file.
  • This is pretty important, because keeping it off the archived PC lowers the likelyhood of your backup going down with the ship. Any image under 700 MB can easily go on a CD. This might screw you though, as I will demonstrate, on tomorrow's show.

Regroup, and reconvene tomorrow.

This is already a great amount of info. Take some time to follow the links, on the previous slides, and post any comments you have about the basic concepts I've covered. We'll get into the real mechanics tomorrow. %SLIDESHOWEND%

%META:TOPICINFO{author="AaronEstrada" date="1071013680" format="1.0" version="1.1"}% %META:TOPICPARENT{name="TopicalVacation"}% http://www.partimage.org

-- AaronEstrada - 09 Dec 2003