Imaging Hard Drives

[Bernie Hoefer]

     I came across something today that I wanted to share with the group.
     I wanted to make a `perfect` copy of one of my computer's hard
drives.  Basically, I wanted to image it so that if I needed, I could
restore the hard drive to the *exact* condition it is in, today.
     I normally use SystemRescueCD's partimage for this task.  But while
looking online for some other information, I stumbled across the fact
that partimage hasn't been actively developed for about 6 years![1]
     It seems there is another program that is actively developed[2]
that has improved features over partimage.[3]  I especially like the
ability to restore the file system to a partition which is smaller than
the original.
     Unfortunately, NTFS support is "experimental".  Since fsarchiver is
not a block-level imaging program like partimage is, some of the NTFS
file system peculiarities cause more trouble for fsarchiver.[4]  I could
not archive a Windows 7 NTFS; I kept getting errors like this:

  [errno=31, Too many links]:
  oper_save.c#349,createar_item_winattr(): winattr:
  lgetxattr(/dell/Image/Factory3.wim,system.ntfs_dos_name):
  returned negative attribute size

     Despite its failure with Windows 7 NTFS,[5] I still thought this
tool was commendable and wanted to share!


[1]<http://www.partimage.org/Changelog>
[2]<http://www.fsarchiver.org/Changelog>
[3]<http://www.fsarchiver.org/Fsarchiver_vs_partimage>
[4]<http://www.fsarchiver.org/Cloning-ntfs#Limitations>
[5]Apparently this is just a Windows 7/8/10 problem?

<http://tuxera.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=38517&sid=63af09bb08aa70b5f671c693b8c99531#p38517>

-- 
Bernie Hoefer
PGP e-mail is welcome!  Get my 1024 bit signature key from:
<http://pgpkeys.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x446A6F93>.
"The more I know, the more I realize how much I do not understand."

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