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Has anyone tried Clonezilla as a backup solution and found it wanting? My problem has always been on a dual-boot PC (with Linux and that other operating system), where I have frequently stopped the machine from booting after somehow corrupting either the Linux OS, the GRUB boot menu, or both. While Clonezilla will, with a little prodding, back up the entire disk drive, it refuses point blank to restore just the Linux partition. Or, at least, it did the way that I used Clonezilla.
The program can create a backup using either its savedisk or saveparts feature. Savedisk allows the entire disk to be restored but will not restore single partitions. In contrast, saveparts will restore one or more partitions, but will not restore the master boot record or the partition table, and so can’t be used to restore the entire disk. Clearly, this is not very helpful when it comes to flexibility in restoring disks and/or partitions.
The other problem that I have with Clonezilla is that its old-style, text-based interface is somewhat complex and difficult to navigate. But now, there is a new kid on the block – Rescuezilla (https://rescuezilla.com) – that offers a user-friendly, graphical user interface, clearly-defined icons and menus for specific tasks, and the flexibility to save and restore both disks and partitions, including rapid restoration of just the Linux partition!
Rescuezilla is actually a fork of Redo (now Redo Rescue). It can be downloaded as an ISO file (the current version is rescuezilla-2.4.1-64bit.jammy.iso) that can be used to create a bootable USB flash drive. As the “jammy” portion of the filename indicates, the USB boots into a version of Ubuntu Linux; however, the Ubuntu desktop is initially hidden from the end user as Rescuezilla loads in full-screen mode.
The main menu provides Backup and Restore options, in addition to icons for Clone, Verify Image, and Image Explorer. The latter option is a work-in-progress, and is intended to eventually allow mounting a disk partition directly from the backup image in order to extract individual files and folders. However, for our present purposes, we will just consider the main two options – those for Backup and Restore.
Selecting Backup launches a wizard that guides the user through the eight steps required to implement a disk backup: • Select the source drive that is to be backed up from a menu of available disks • Select the partitions that are to be included in the backup (by default all partitions are checked) • Select the destination drive on which to store the disk image • Browse to a folder on the destination drive where the backup image is to be stored (the system creates this as a mount point) • Optionally, edit the default name for the backup image and add a textual description • Choose the algorithm and level for file compression (defaults are gzip and 6) • Review the summary information on the settings selected (the source drive and partitions to be backed up) • Click on the Continue button to start the backup process
The resulting image takes the form of a folder with multiple files that are clearly a mix of administrative information and segments of compressed partitions (e.g. sda5.ntfs-ptcl-img.gz.aa, …gz.ab, …gz.ac). In my baseline test, the overall file compression was approximately 60%.
Restoring from a backup image is essentially the reverse of the backup process. The image file on the backup disk is identified; the partition(s) to be restored, and the disk on which the partition(s) is to be restored, are selected. Note that to restore a single partition, all that is required is to uncheck all the partitions in the list of those included in the disk image with the exception of the one that is to be restored. Simple!
I tried a number of restorations, including just my dedicated data drive (Partition 7) which I could verify against a file-by-file backup stored on a USB flash drive. I also restored the Linux operating system partition and swap area (Partitions 9 and 10) and, finally, the entire drive. In each of the latter cases, success was confirmed by the fact that the disk subsequently booted normally into both Linux and Windows via the GRUB boot menu.
For me, these tests have confirmed that Rescuezilla is a viable backup-restore solution for my system. Furthermore, the fact that Rescuezilla functions as a live-USB provides a ready-made backup option, and can be used even if the PC refuses to boot normally from the hard drive.