Cloning HDD to image file

Buchanan0204 · 18 Jan 2012 at 01:05

I would like to be able to clone a hard drive to an image file or something similar.

The hard drive doesn't have an OS on it as such... so installing software on the drive isn't an option.

I know I can clone from one drive to another OK. However I don't have a spare drive to hand unfortunately. I would like to store the files/image on a hard disk without that hard disk becoming a clone of the source drive.

Is this possible?

N.B. Copy & Paste isn't an option.

beejjacobs · 18 Jan 2012 at 01:24

What about windows back up? You can select drives to back up then it just saves it all in one file IIRC.

d_brennen · 18 Jan 2012 at 01:27

Clonezilla live CD can create an image file from a hard disk. Bit hard to get your head around it if you've never used it before or new to Linux terminology though

Buchanan0204 · 18 Jan 2012 at 02:06

d_brennen said:
Clonezilla live CD can create an image file from a hard disk. Bit hard to get your head around it if you've never used it before or new to Linux terminology though

Smashing. I've used it before... just the other day actually! I was wondering if it did it, however I never remembered seeing an option for an image.

Will take a look now. Cheers!

Buchanan0204 · 18 Jan 2012 at 02:06

beejjacobs said:
What about windows back up? You can select drives to back up then it just saves it all in one file IIRC.

No OS installed... No software including Windows. Wasn't an option.

Cheers anyway

beejjacobs · 18 Jan 2012 at 02:10

Couldn't you put it in another PC? Surely that's what you are doing anyway. Anyway seems like youve got a solution!

EDIT: okay seems you weren't oops!

Buchanan0204 · 18 Jan 2012 at 22:48

beejjacobs said:
Couldn't you put it in another PC? Surely that's what you are doing anyway. Anyway seems like youve got a solution!

EDIT: okay seems you weren't oops!

lol

atomic7431 · 19 Jan 2012 at 10:29

trune image can do that booting off the cd

BloodyL · 19 Jan 2012 at 14:15

Parted magic is great, I shrunk a 900Gb partition to 100Gb using the partition editor then cloned it to a 256gb ssd drive using clonezilla, finally I resized the partition back to maximum and all is cool, AS SSD reports a green 103424k alignment.

Grenache · 21 Jan 2012 at 12:34

Two more suggestions:
If the source partition is NTFS, you can use "disk2vhd" from Microsoft Sysinternals (free download) to create a virtual disk file that can be mounter elsewhere or use in a Hyper-V machine.

In all cases, the unix system rescue cd (www.sysresccd.org), free download, has Partimage, and I use that extensively for creating and restoring images of physical disks, both to another disk on the same PC, or to a network share.

Buchanan0204 · 21 Jan 2012 at 18:25

Grenache said:
Two more suggestions:
If the source partition is NTFS, you can use "disk2vhd" from Microsoft Sysinternals (free download) to create a virtual disk file that can be mounter elsewhere or use in a Hyper-V machine.

In all cases, the unix system rescue cd (www.sysresccd.org), free download, has Partimage, and I use that extensively for creating and restoring images of physical disks, both to another disk on the same PC, or to a network share.

Second one sounds like it does what I'm after. Will give it a go next time I need to. Cheers.