Software for Disk Imaging.

[LaserSteve]

I'm looking for something similar to Acronis for imaging the hard disks of old laboratory computers.  My employer has moved to Win7 and Win8 for most machines in the campus.  I am responsible for a few labs with a few XP and Older OS machines.  I have authority to keep those machines running as long as I can, as long as there is a critical instrument attached to the computer.

 I have no install disks for XP etc per policy.  I am allowed to image the hard disks. XP machines are automagically kicked from the network by IT, so I can't back to the cloud, nor would I desire to do so.  Nor can I use any of the newer backup software that demands NET access for the licensing.

My predecessors tossed most of the install CDs for the instruments. So this is a crucial step.

So who recommends what disk imaging software?  Has to be a full byte by byte backup, not mind either SATA or IDE, and make a boot CD. Actual image will go to a Terabyte USB drive.

Suggestions ?

Steve

[suicidaleggroll]

No experience with Windows utilities, but you could boot up a live Linux CD/DVD/USB and use dd to back up the Windows image to an external drive.

dd does a byte-for-byte copy of the entire disk.  Partition information, filesystem information, all files/dirs, even deleted files if they haven't been overwritten.

[LaserSteve]

Can DD back to a different sized disk and create viable Windows boot partitions?  For most of these machines, if they break, I'm going to a room full of surplus computers and grabbing a different machine or  old hard drive. Most of our lab computers are not identical like the office machines.

Steve

[suicidaleggroll]

The new disk would have to be the same size or larger than the original, and the partition created on the new drive would be the same size as the original (so it would have unused space at the end if the new disk was larger), but you should be able to expand the partition/filesystem to fit the drive once you booted it up.  The disks should have the same geometry though (sector size, etc.).

The image will also be the full size of the original drive unless you compress it.  Not the size of the used space on the original drive, but the size of the drive itself.  So if you image a 100 GB drive, you'll get a 100 GB image, even if there's only 5 GB of data on the drive.

What's on the drive is of no concern to dd.  It could be encrypted data, Linux partitions, Windows partitions, OSX partitions, or nothing useful at all, it doesn't care.  It doesn't mount the filesystem or try to read any files, it just does a raw byte for byte copy of whatever is on the physical disk.

There are other utilities as well - partimage, clonezilla, etc., some of which might be more intelligent about restoring from the image and auto-expanding to fill the new disk.  dd is a nice simple tool that you'll find in any live Linux CD/DVD/USB though.  Just don't mix up the if and of parameters!  And you should test it to make sure it works in your application (make an image, swap drives, restore the image, see if it boots up properly) before calling it good.

[Circuitous]

I have switched from Acronis to using Macrium Reflect.

[LaserSteve]

Having just talked to Acronis tech support about options, I am not impressed.  Could not get good technical answers to basic questions.   At my old employer we had an unlimited license that worked well and only required a USB stick as well as a external disk. Now they no longer offer the unlimited license.  Due to purchasing restrictions I can only purchase one program, and not keep buying additional software.  I work in an state owned academic environment. We have some strict rules on what we can and cannot do with software.

Will look at Macrium. Thanks...

Any suggestions will still be appreciated.

Steve

[SeanB]

While the machine is working simply clone the drive using dd or Clonezilla, then place the new drive in the machine and see if it works with it, then turn off, disconnect the drive and place the original back in. Then clone the clone again and place one inside the case if possible, and place the other in a antistatic bag, wrap in antistatic bubble wrap and place in a labelled box with the machine serial number. Place a printed sheet with all parameters as well, along with bios settings and all license keys and such from the machine as well printed on it. Then you can take an image from Clonezilla and compress it and store on a server as well for an extra layer of backup.

I did that for an old Win95 machine ( it was an upgrade from MSDos 4.1) that was no longer supported by the supplier, but which i really needed to keep running till what it ran was EOL and scrapped. I just had 2 older drives with images on it, and they were wrapped in antistatic wrap for the one, and screwed in the drive bay for the other, placed in the machine tower. The backup was stored on a server. Still have the drives ( and the machine with it's serial port mouse and parallel port dongle) though the rest has gone. Even still have the compressed image sitting on my machine as well, along with some old servers as well.

Anybody want a complete set of Netware 3.1 media? even have the box of printed manuals.

[amiq]

xxclone?

[kmm]

I've been using CloneZilla to image and replicate machines both VM and physical with good results, and it can do handy stuff like image to/from an SMB or NFS share. Pretty happy with it, does what it says on the tin.

http://clonezilla.org/

[Howardlong]

For the two old XP based test equipment systems I have, I did two things.

I used Acronis (from boot CD) to image the entire disk to an external USB drive.

I bought a new SSD disk, replaced the old disk I'd imaged, and restored the image to the new SSD.

Made sure it all booted and worked.

I documented the process, including a switch that was required to force Acronis into VGA mode on one of the systems. I saved the images to DVD too, put the old disk somewhere safe, as well as the UsB drive with the image I made and a couple of copies of the Acronis boot CD. Yes, I am a bit anal about backups, it comes from my previous life designing and troubleshooting financial trading systems. But one day it just might save you. And remember a backup's no good unless you know how to restore it.

For my own normal system backups I use ShadowProtect, it was much faster than any other backup software when I did comparative tests about two years ago and I've kept with it. The one big downside is that its copy protection breaks for no apparent reason about once every six or eight months, which ends up being a painful call to support, and you have to wait a couple of days for them to pull their fingers out to reset your licence. But it does work, I do weekly full backups and hourly incremental backups over the network, they take a matter of about 20s, and being on SSDs I don't even notice it.

[nctnico]

Back in the old days I used Norton Ghost a lot. No idea what it is called today. With some patience it could even do transfers over the parallel port using a (IIRC) laplink cable.

[Howardlong]

Back in the old days I used Norton Ghost a lot. No idea what it is called today. With some patience it could even do transfers over the parallel port using a (IIRC) laplink cable.

That takes me back, although ISTR you were lucky to get much more than about 1MBps with the right parallel port. And Laplink, wow, back in the day you were a nobody on the IT floor without a parallel laplink cable and an appropriate boot floppy.

I did once have a DLink parallel port to Ethernet adapter, getting that to work off a single floppy with the right config.sys and autoexec.bat settings was an education in itself.

[richard.cs]

I've always used dd on a live CD for this, simple but effective. Others have given most of the details but here's a handy tip to create a disk image with dd comparable in size to the data used: first fill all the unused space on the drive with zeros then create a compressed image. e.g.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda/bigfile.null; rm /dev/hda/bigfile.null
 -> creates a file full of zeros in hda that occupies all the free space, then deletes it.
dd if=/dev/hda | gzip -c > /dev/usbdisk0/image.gz
 -> creates the image, piping the dd output through gzip to compress it.


All that empty space compresses nicely but it will slug away trying to compress your other files (with varying degrees of success depending on what they are) so this will take longer than a simple image. It has the advantage of producing an image barely larger than the amount of space actually in use (and potentially smaller if you have lots of compressible files).

Your image is an exact copy of everything on the disc including partition structure and file systems. It can be copied onto any disk the same size or larger. Note that it's normal for discs of the same nominal size to be slightly different sizes so larger would be better lest you find that your new disk is a few kB smaller than the one it replaces. I've been bitten copying an image of a 4GB flash card onto another 4GB one that was very slightly smaller. If there's unpartitioned space at the end of the disk bigger than the delta this can be ignored.

[Tom D]

I use Norton Ghost 11.5.1 on a WinPE 3.0 bootable CD for imaging from XP or W7. I've imaged single HDD's and restored the image to RAID arrays and vice versa with no drama, or loaded the image to differently sized hard disks or SSD's, again with no problems.

It is imperative that you check the partition alignment on an XP machine before you image the hard disk. From the Start Menu, type in Msinfo32.exe in Run and go to Components/Storage/Disks. Look for your HDD and locate the "Partition Starting Offset". Check that this number is divisible by 4,096 - that is, if you divide the Partition Starting Offset by 4,096 and your result is a whole number and not a decimal, your partition is correctly aligned. If it is not aligned, you'll have to run a Partition Alignment utilty such as Paragon Alignment Tool.

An un-aligned partition before imaging can create problems that you don't even want to think about when you try to restore the image to a HDD or SSD. Additionally, failure to perform partition alignment may result in significant performance degradation.

Tom

[AlfBaz]

I wrote my own imaging software, predominantly to image Compact flash card's but it works on any mounted drive. It's windows only, uses no "frame work" ie windows api calls only and reads writes byte for byte images of the entire disk including boot block.

Unfortunately I wrote it back in 2007 and haven't used it since I discovered POWERISO, so I've forgotten what the hell I wrote . With poweriso, if on install you allow it to integrate with explorer you can simply right click a drive, select poweriso->add to image file and choose to create binary, iso or daa image. I also found poweriso could read images my little 65kB exe created. You can download an unregistered copy but it's file size limited. The registered version only costs 29 bucks and you get the ability to virtually mount images as well

[Howardlong]

As a matter of interest, now do these disk imaging systems manage with this new fangled UEFI and Secure Boot nonsense?

[nctnico]

I've always used dd on a live CD for this, simple but effective. Others have given most of the details but here's a handy tip to create a disk image with dd comparable in size to the data used: first fill all the unused space on the drive with zeros then create a compressed image. e.g.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda/bigfile.null; rm /dev/hda/bigfile.null
 -> creates a file full of zeros in hda that occupies all the free space, then deletes it.
dd if=/dev/hda | gzip -c > /dev/usbdisk0/image.gz
 -> creates the image, piping the dd output through gzip to compress it.

The problem with that is that you can only copy back to a similar drive and end up with a partition of the same size. Not every BIOS maps the sectors in the same way. What good cloning software does is read the filesystem information and store the files. This makes an image much more portable between various hardware.

[digsys]

I've been using Terrabyte Imager for years over literally 1000,s instances and all variations. It has all the features
you could possibly need, and works on all operating systems. Resizing, byte-byte, copy deleted areas etc. Small and fast.
www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-windows.htm
Been using it all this week to create snapshots.

[joeqsmith]

I've been using Terrabyte Imager for years over literally 1000,s instances and all variations. It has all the features
you could possibly need, and works on all operating systems. Resizing, byte-byte, copy deleted areas etc. Small and fast.
www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-windows.htm
Been using it all this week to create snapshots.

Same.   It's been a very good product.  Before that, I was using Power Quest Drive Image.

[Stonent]

In my opinion nothing beats Ghost 11.5.

Here's something useful:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee656415.aspx

Disk2VHD, it converts a physical drive to a VHD which is mountable in windows from disk manager.

[bingo600]

I'm using Clonezilla also.
Never failed me.

/Bingo

[Stonent]

As a matter of interest, now do these disk imaging systems manage with this new fangled UEFI and Secure Boot nonsense?

Ghost works fine, and disk2vhd can export into VHDX which is the format you can use with Windows 8/8.1 to boot the image directly from the C: drive.

I have Windows 8.1 Pro on my laptop and I have a bunch of VHDX  that I can use to boot into Server 2012R2, Windows 10, Server Core 2012  R2.

Code: [Select]


Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {bootmgr}
device                  partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume2
path                    \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-us
inherit                 {globalsettings}
integrityservices       Enable
custom:1600007e         Yes
default                 {current}
resumeobject            {313034c2-2987-11e4-8ac1-94758b4eb578}
displayorder            {313034cc-2987-11e4-8ac1-94758b4eb578}
                        {313034ca-2987-11e4-8ac1-94758b4eb578}
                        {313034c8-2987-11e4-8ac1-94758b4eb578}
                        {313034c6-2987-11e4-8ac1-94758b4eb578}
                        {current}
toolsdisplayorder       {memdiag}
timeout                 30

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {313034cc-2987-11e4-8ac1-94758b4eb578}
device                  vhd=[C:]\VHD\Windows 10 x64 Enterprise1.vhdx
path                    \windows\system32\winload.efi
description             Windows Technical Preview
locale                  en-us
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
isolatedcontext         Yes
custom:1600007e         Yes
allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075
osdevice                vhd=[C:]\VHD\Windows 10 x64 Enterprise1.vhdx
systemroot              \windows
resumeobject            {313034cb-2987-11e4-8ac1-94758b4eb578}
nx                      OptIn
bootmenupolicy          Standard
detecthal               Yes

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {313034ca-2987-11e4-8ac1-94758b4eb578}
device                  vhd=[C:]\VHD\Windows 10 x64 Enterprise.vhdx
path                    \windows\system32\winload.efi
description             Windows Technical Preview
locale                  en-us
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
integrityservices       Enable
isolatedcontext         Yes
allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075
osdevice                vhd=[C:]\VHD\Windows 10 x64 Enterprise.vhdx
systemroot              \windows
resumeobject            {313034c9-2987-11e4-8ac1-94758b4eb578}
nx                      OptIn
bootmenupolicy          Standard
hypervisorlaunchtype    Auto
detecthal               Yes

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {313034c8-2987-11e4-8ac1-94758b4eb578}
device                  vhd=[C:]\VHD\2012 R2.vhdx
path                    \windows\system32\winload.efi
description             Windows Server 2012 R2
locale                  en-us
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
isolatedcontext         Yes
allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075
osdevice                vhd=[C:]\VHD\2012 R2.vhdx
systemroot              \windows
resumeobject            {313034c7-2987-11e4-8ac1-94758b4eb578}
nx                      OptOut
hypervisorlaunchtype    Auto
detecthal               Yes

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {313034c6-2987-11e4-8ac1-94758b4eb578}
device                  vhd=[C:]\2012R2.VHDX
path                    \windows\system32\winload.efi
description             Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2
locale                  en-us
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
isolatedcontext         Yes
allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075
osdevice                vhd=[C:]\2012R2.VHDX
systemroot              \windows
resumeobject            {313034c5-2987-11e4-8ac1-94758b4eb578}
nx                      OptOut
detecthal               Yes

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.efi
description             Windows 8.1
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence        {cb140ad8-14cf-11e4-8256-c45444a1bd83}
integrityservices       Enable
recoveryenabled         Yes
testsigning             No
isolatedcontext         Yes
allowedinmemorysettings 0x15000075
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {313034c2-2987-11e4-8ac1-94758b4eb578}
nx                      OptIn
bootmenupolicy          Standard
hypervisorlaunchtype    Auto
detecthal               Yes


[macboy]

Can DD back to a different sized disk and create viable Windows boot partitions?  For most of these machines, if they break, I'm going to a room full of surplus computers and grabbing a different machine or  old hard drive. Most of our lab computers are not identical like the office machines.

Steve

As long as the target disk is bigger than the source, you can use dd. Then later you can expand the partitions (and file systems) and/or add partitions to the empty space. Or just leave it be. The new disk is a perfect clone of the old one including the master boot record, boot sectors, etc.  The grub or NT loader will work exactly as before. I have migrated from a spinning disk to a SSD (and then to a larger SSD) this way. The only real negative is that the computer is 'down' during this time. OTOH, there are windows based utilities to do a live partition or disk clone, allowing the computer to be up. I don't know how I feel about those.

Clonezilla is OK, but does not handle all situations. I have my windows installed on D: (with C: as the boot partition), and it does not handle this for me. I eventually reverted to a good old byte-by-byte disk copy with dd.

[richard.cs]

Whatever you choose at least for goodness sake test out the copied image by installing a backup drive with the image on it.
...

This is the single most important post in the thread so far.

[IanJ]

I've been using Terrabyte Imager for years over literally 1000,s instances and all variations. It has all the features
you could possibly need, and works on all operating systems. Resizing, byte-byte, copy deleted areas etc. Small and fast.
www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-windows.htm
Been using it all this week to create snapshots.

Me too!.......it's my backup solution of choice. I have the DOS app also for restoring via boot CD. Has pulled me out of a few corners when hard drives have failed........30mins later the backup is restored as if nothing had happened!

Ian.