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Partition Imaging

Table of Contents

Partimage

http://www.partimage.org/

Partition Image is a Linux/UNIX utility which saves partitions in many formats (see below) to an image file. The image file can be compressed in the GZIP/BZIP2 formats to save disk space, and split into multiple files to be copied on removable floppies (ZIP for example), … Partitions can be saved across the network since version 0.6.0.

Partition Image will only copy data from the used portions of the partition. For speed and efficiency, free blocks are not written to the image file. This is unlike the 'dd' command, which also copies empty blocks. Partition Image also works for large, very full partitions. For example, a full 1 GB partition can be compressed with gzip down to 400MB.

Supported file systems

name description state ext2fs/ext3fs the linux standard stable ReiserFS a new journalized and powerful file system stable FAT16/32 DOS and Windows file systems stable HPFS IBM OS/2 File System stable JFS Journalised File System, from IBM, used on Aix stable XFS another jounalized and efficient File System, from sgi, used on Irix stable

Several projects provide advanced boot/root disk and eltorito bootable CD-Rom to use partition image from a rescue disk: We recommand using SystemRescueCd since it's maitained by a member of the partimage project.

System Rescue CD http://www.sysresccd.org/download.en.php

Comment, v0.6.2 limitation

bug on bzip2 compression

Because of a bug, you won't be able to restore MBR from any bzip2 compressed image unless you manualy run bzip2 -d on them

partition size has to be exactly the same

The partition is too small to be restored:
Original partition
size:........2097414144 bytes
Destination partition
size:.....1052803584 bytes

I only have 427M used on it, which should well fit into the 1G destination drive. With this limitation, I think by now partimage is practically useless.

Help

EXAMPLE

partimage -z1 -o -d save /dev/hda12 /mnt/backup/redhat-6.2.partimg.gz
partimage -z2 -o save /dev/hda9 /mnt/backup/win95-osr2.partimg.bz2
partimage -e restore /dev/hda13 /mnt/backup/suse-6.4.partimg
partimage restmbr /mnt/backup/debian-potato-2.2.partimg.bz2
partimage imginfo /mnt/backup/debian-potato-2.2.partimg.bz2

OPTIONS

-z val --compress val
       Set  image  file compression level.  val=0: don't compress: very
       fast but very big image file val=1: compress  using  gzip:  fast
       and small image file (default) val=2: compress using bzip2: very
       slow and very small image file

-o --overwrite
       Overwrite the existing image file without confirmation.

-d --nodesc
       Don't ask any description for the image file.

-V vol --volume vol
       Split image into multiple volumes files. vol will be the size in
       KB of volumes
-w --waitvol
       Wait for a confirmation after each volume change.

-e --erase
       Erase empty blocks on restore with zero bytes.

-M --nombr
       Don't create a backup of the MBR (Mast Boot Record) in the image
       file.

-f action --finish action
       Action to do if finished successfully action=0      wait:  don't
       make   anything  action=1      halt  (power  off)  the  computer
       action=2     reboot (restart the computer): action=3     quit

-b --batch
       batch mode: the GUI won't wait for an user action.

DIAGNOSTICS You can read options set at compile time running 'partimage -i'.