Redo- A simple live CD to Backup-Restore your computer

Several people at work imaged their drives with this tool after I bragged about it (it has a nice, clean interface... easy for non-IT folks). But in the one case where we actually needed to do a restore, Redo choked and couldn't manage. So I tested several backups made with Redo on various hardware, and in every single case the restore option failed spectacularly.

We immediately switched to Clonezilla for easy imaging (I'm not about to explain 'dd' to them). I wanted this tool to work, but it didn't for us. Maybe it has improved since last year and YMMV.

Clonezilla is a brilliant tool. dd and cpio are the best tools for people who know the command line, of course :)

No, dd and cpio are not the best tools for command-line use, for backups. rsync is. It's perfect for incremental backups to an removable drive. Why copy all your data every backup, when you can just copy the data that changed?

But the differences between data backup and system backup are huge. Long have I struggled to find a way to create a backup that would completely restore my machine to the state it was in prior to the catastrophe. When I can effortlessly feed the machine a series of disks and have the end result be a fully restored machine, I'm happy. Many new computer users get lost in the distinction between data and system backup. For data backup, many of the tools mentioned above are adequate. For system dumps, not so much.

> Long have I struggled to find a way to create a backup that would completely restore my machine to the state it was in prior to the catastrophe.

Well, that's what Clonezilla is supposed to do. But it's not an incremental process. It's a complete backup each time.

Yeah, I know JD, the operative term is "supposed to". I've just had it fail on me so often I gave up on it and use Acronis. It works for catastrophic failures every time. Shame too because Clonezilla works great for data backups.

Since we've switched to Clonezilla, we've had to re-image three virus- and malware-infested drives containing NTFS partitions. Fortunately, it worked extremely well in every case.

> ...the operative term is "supposed to" ... I've just had it fail on me so often I gave up on it

Understandable. I've only used it a few times, but it's always worked for me. I have used partimage a number of times, and it seems to work perfectly, but it only backs up partitions, not the entire machine.

Acronis works fine, and you used to be able to get a free version if you downloaded some Russian Linux distro which began with a. I think it was ASPLinux, but I'm not certain. It came with a copy of Acronis for changing your partitions. That version is probably way out of date now, of course, and probably won't work with Vista or 7. I downloaded it just to get that capability. :)

Of course, the industry standard backup utility is Norton Ghost. Pretty much everyone seems to use it. I also have some older versions of it which came with various motherboards I ordered. But again, they're out of date and probably won't work with Vista or 7.

Heh. dd for mbr, sfdisk for partition table, partimage for the partitions (unless you have a system with odd partitions). Of course the new disk needs to be at least the same size as the old one...and you need to have all the image parts in one place (or hack a script to let you swap discs..which I've done at one point).

*sigh* Yeah, I'd really like a fully foss bare-metal restore system that's easy to use and supports spreading the image across multiple discs (or network, or portable drive - wherever you happen to store the image).

Quoting:Long have I struggled to find a way to create a backup that would completely restore my machine to the state it was in prior to the catastrophe.

Ken, have you tried Amanda? I believe you have multiple machines to backup and an Amanda (or Zmanda) server will do a very nice job for you.