Disk Cloning

[Warren Block]

On Mon, 28 Sep 2009, Chris wrote:

> Please suggest a cloning method comparable to Clonezilla.
>
> Preferably fast, no need to install a base OS, easy to clone and
> restore. Of course, the key is fast.

Clonezilla uses ntfsclone or partimage, both programs that have built-in 
knowledge of specific filesystems.  ntfsclone, the default, of course 
only supports NTFS.  partimage has had "beta" support for UFS for a 
while.  I don't know how well it works.  You'd have to specifically 
choose partimage instead of ntfsclone in the Clonezilla startup.

To get the equivalent of Clonezilla with FreeBSD, you should be able to 
boot a "livefs" FreeBSD CD and use dump to backup via ssh.  There's an 
example in the Handbook:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/backup-basics.html#AEN25814

dump is not terribly fast.  A comparison to partimage would be 
interesting.

-Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA