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I ve spent some time to install Ubuntu 16.04 in my Laptop and replace Win10 (single boot).

However, I had to install within Ubuntu VMWare with Win10 (as Virtual Machine), because too many files strongly linked to Office Excel.

Everything is running well and now I want to make a full backup of my Laptop (am normally using Macrium with Windows, but not available for Linux).

What is available for Ubuntu and working well (probably many)? What is the best?

Thanks for your advice. Serros

serros
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2 Answers2

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If you have a spare drive you can always use clonezilla to clone the hard drive. It will backup everything and allow for a redeployment. http://clonezilla.org/

David
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  • ok thanks Working well, I already tried it? Actually some limitations: Recovery Clonezilla live with multiple CDs or DVDs is not implemented yet. Now all the files have to be in one CD or DVD if you choose to create the recovery iso file. Since my backup is about 200GB, stored in external Drive, I do need to have a boot disk first and restore after booting (like Macrium does). – serros Aug 27 '16 at 14:40
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    It works well. I like the fact that it's a bit by bit. It copies everything, including the OS. We used it to deploy windows computers and I have used it to redeploy my Ubuntu box a few times. I personally reclone my PC every 2 months. – David Aug 27 '16 at 14:44
  • ok, but you does it work? can you make a boot DVD? – serros Aug 27 '16 at 14:46
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    Clonezilla itself is a bootable disk that create an image of a target computer. All settings and such gets copied. This includes the VM machine. You store the image elsewhere. – David Aug 27 '16 at 15:34
  • While this link may answer the question, it is better to include the essential parts of the answer here and provide the link for reference. Link-only answers can become invalid if the linked page changes. - From Review – Andrea Lazzarotto Aug 27 '16 at 22:29
  • @andrea lazzarotto I am seeing I also need to include most of the steps as well. I will remember this for next time. – David Aug 28 '16 at 01:24
  • The BIG problem with Clonezilla clone, is that it WILL NOT clone, or RESTORE, to a smaller drive... even if there's only 1 block difference! – heynnema Aug 28 '16 at 01:38
  • @David not next time, this time. :) Please [edit] the answer and include the relevant information, otherwise it risks getting deleted. – Andrea Lazzarotto Aug 28 '16 at 09:48
  • @heynnema of course, Clonezilla does not resize partitions. But why would you want to restore on a smaller drive? If you need that, you just have to reduce the partition before cloning. – Andrea Lazzarotto Aug 28 '16 at 09:49
  • @AndreaLazzarotto example: you have two 1TB hard drives. You Clonezilla clone them for backup. It works fine. Then your primary hard disk's software gets corrupted for some reason, and you think, that's OK, I've got a bootable clone that I can restore from. Wrong. Turns out the backup drive was 1 block larger than the primary drive, so cloning worked fine. But if you boot the backup drive, and try to clone/restore back to the original drive, it won't work, because the destination drive is smaller than the source drive. – heynnema Aug 28 '16 at 13:44
  • @AndreaLazzarotto another example: you have two 1TB drives. They differ in size by 1 block. You adjust the partitions on the primary drive so that 10G unallocated space is at the end of the drive. That will easily fit on either drive. You clone the primary drive. You'll still end up with the same problem as above, because Clonezilla ONLY compares the last available block numbers to determine that one drive is still smaller than the other, and clone/restores will still fail. – heynnema Aug 28 '16 at 13:54
  • @heynnema do you have first person experience in this 1-block difference problem? It seems quite weird to me. In the past I have cloned drives with Clonezilla and I remember reducing the size of a partition to clone to a smaller drive. It worked. – Andrea Lazzarotto Aug 28 '16 at 14:00
  • @AndreaLazzarotto yes, personal experience. You can check at clonezilla.org and review the FAQ's and the forum for other's experience on the same. The reason your experience worked is because you were probably working at the partition level. It would have failed if you tried to clone the drive, even though the data/partition would have fit on the destination drive. It's the reason that I stopped using Clonezilla and went looking for different backup softare... and I settled on Macrium Reflect. Cheers, Al – heynnema Aug 28 '16 at 14:08
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Macrium Reflect running under Windows will backup Ubuntu partitions. Might as well use what you already have installed.

Andrea Lazzarotto
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heynnema
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  • Interesting, but how do I run Reflect to launch the backup? Also from CV ROM? – serros Aug 28 '16 at 05:49
  • You boot into Windows and start Reflect like you normally do. Or, you can boot to a Reflect CD that you've built using the Reflect application. Cheers, Al – heynnema Aug 28 '16 at 08:14