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Ask Slashdot: Create Custom Recovery Partitions With FOSS?

Posted by timothy on from the moving-the-bits-around-again-and-again dept.

First time accepted submitter KowboyKrash writes "OK, a little background: I use Acronis to create custom recovery partitions for my personal computers that include all my software and drivers. I also work for a growing computer repair shop which has ventured into eBay sales of refurbished computers. We receive the machines with wiped hard drives. Since we get multiples of each model, we load everything on one then make images with Clonezilla. It would be nice to set up recovery partitions as well. Acronis is out of the question, since it would cost for a license for each machine. Do any Slashdotters know of any FOSS options?"

4 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  2. Re:Here's an idea by FalleStar · · Score: 3, Informative

    No need to launch CloneZilla, all the bash script would have to do is:

    1. Get confirmation from the user to perform the restore
    2. dd if=/path/to/backup.img of=/dev/sda1(or whichever is the main partition)
    3. Reboot
  3. DD of a GZipped Image by rhadc · · Score: 3, Informative

    dd is your primary tool.

    zero out your drive so that when you compress it, you get a very small image.
    dd if=/dev/zero of=[drive]

    Install and configure your OS onto [drive]

    dd if=/dev/[drive] | gzip -c > zipped_drive_image.bin.gz

    to restore:
    gzcat zipped_drive_image.bin.gz | dd of=[drive]

    I may be a bit rusty, so the commands may need slight work. I've definitely used this method though, and it has worked well.

  4. Re:No, ntfsclone is what you're looking for. by zougloub · · Score: 3, Informative

    For NTFS partitions, ntfsclone --save-image / --restore-image is really efficient. You probably want to feed its output to lzop instead of gzip, because gzip/bzip2/xz would be a bottleneck and you don't gain that much with it: - compressing is longer - decompressing is longer - space gain is not magical (when performing an initial disk image (whole disk, with dd/cat) of an OEM laptop with a 640GB disk, I had 26GB with xz --extreme instead of 44GB with lzop -3). xz file was too slow to decompress, so I finally deleted it. Note: if the MBR or partition boot is broken, you'll need to boot with a Windoze rescue CD to fix that.