[lug] Drive Imaging between dissimilar drives?

[Ryan Fligg]

On Wednesday 05 July 2006 23:03, siegfried wrote:
> My current drive is approx 100GB and has three boot partitions: one for
> Fedora core 4 and another for Windows 2003 server and another for Windows
> XP home. I have an identical second drive.
>
> I just purchased a new 300GB external USB drive. I've been reading about
> norton ghost and I understand it is a drive imaging program.
>
> (1) Does that mean I can use it (norton ghost) to backup both windows and
> linux boot partitions too? I believe it does.
Yes, Norton Ghost has this capability
>
> (2) I heard a rumor that norton ghost can image dissimilar drives and one
> can boot from the copy (or image) it creates. Does anyone have any ideas on
> how I might confirm that without buying a copy?
I have used Norton Ghost for many years.  I have setup enterprise 
installations and many imaging solutions.  Norton will allow you to image 
dissimilar drives.  I have only used Norton Ghost to create an image from a 
drive and then reimage to a larger drive. I have never had success imaging to 
a smaller drive, for obvious reasons. I have used Norton Ghost to create 
images and then setup a PXE server so enterprise clients could choose which 
image they would like to use at boot time.  Along with roaming profiles (for 
windows side) and NFS mounted home directories (for linux side).  This 
created a fairly mobile and safe environment.

>
> (3) Is there a forum that discusses drive imaging? What might that be? Or
> is this an issue one might discuss in any OS forum like unix.com, the SuSE
> forums or the fedora forums?
Norton has fairly good documentation in their knowledge base.  I have not used 
any forums besides experts-exchange when dealing with complex imaging issues.
>
> (4) Is there an open source counterpart to norton ghost that has the
> ability to image dissimilar drives so one can boot from the image?
>
Many use Knoppix or QTParted to accomplish resizing and manipulation of 
partitions.  There is an open source product called Partition Logic, 
http://partitionlogic.org.uk/ , that can accomplish some of the things Norton 
Ghost can do.


> (5) I've been using "telinit 1; cp /dev/sda /dev/sdb" to image my two
> identical drives and this works great as it makes a bootable copy from
> which all the boot partitions are bootable. I have a hunch this won't work,
> however, with my 100GB drive as the source and my new 300GB external USB
> drive as the target. Am I wrong?

Not sure on this one
>
> As per Bear Giles, recent anouncement, I also purchased two NSLU2 slugs on
> sale. (Thanks Bear!)
> Does introducing a NSLU2 NAS controller between my computer and the 300GB
> external USB drive change any of the answers to the above questions?
It should not change any of the above answers as all imaging products I have 
seen allow you to select a source and destination.  These can be USB, CD/DVD, 
disk drives, even flash memory (I have used ghost to image an embedded system 
using compact flash).
>
> Thanks,
> Siegfried
>
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Hope this helped a bit.
-- 
Ryan R. Fligg
Developer

ryan at celebrityaccess.com
720.841.5802 Mobile
303.447.2484 Fax