Backup / Ghost

[Icarus]

Finally got my system working correctly and now i have a burning desire to backup my system (4 re-loads in a week is enough for me).
I tried using Norton's Ghost as I have done with my Window systems in the past, but my second hard drive is also linux partioned so Ghost doesn't know how to call it. Anyone ever get this to work for them?
Or I could copy all the important stuff over to the second drive, what directories do I need to preserve? /root /stand /etc /home /usr...everything?

Ghost is my prefered way to do this, but I can always do this like I do at work...

[Icarus]

^bump^

[SUOrangeman]

If you are running Ghost from DOS, then it will only be able to write images to FAT16/FAT32 volumes. It can read the Linux partitions fine, it's just the writing of the images to disk that's the problem.

You can essentially do the same thing from within Linux, but it certainly won't be as glamourous as Ghost. Something like:

dd if=/dev/hda5 of=/mnt/backup/backup_image

Asumming /dev/hda5 is one of your Linux partitions, the above command will my an exact bit-by-bit copy of that partition to a file. The less-than-glamourous aspect of this is the restore procedure. After all, you'll likely need Linux running to restore. :)

-SUO

[Icarus]

So, ideally I would want to make that second drive into a DOS partition for it to work. I've had trouble in to past trying to make this drive FAT32 through linux (says dosutil is not installed, when it is...)

I wonder if there is a Ghost like program that recognizes linux partitions and can run from GRUB...

[bdg1983]

What version of Ghost? I've read other posts here about users having great success using Ghost with ext2 partitions.

I was using Drive Image Pro 3 for my ext2 partitions and have been able to backup and restore images with no problems.

The problem I have now is Drive Image does not currently support ReiserFS though PowerQuest has told me they will support ReiserFS in a later release of Drive Image.

Give http://www.partimage.org/ a try. I haven't had a chance to test it myself though.

[Icarus]

I have an oooollldd copy of Ghost (5.1c) so I know it won't handle the new ext3 partitions...makes sense.

That link looks like what I;m looking for, heck...free drive imaging software, can't beat that! :D

[bdg1983]

Your quite welcome. Always glad to help.

[teeitup]

Ghost 51.c will work. It has limitations.
It will not compress and will copy all white space.
If you have a 4.3GB drive/partition the resulting ghost file will be 4.3GB. This can be a problem when the partitions are large.
The latest version 6.x works fine. Boots from CD, does a good job.