What's a good disk/partition clone program for Linux?

[Red Squirrel]

...Other than Clonezilla? I've never had luck with Clonezilla, it usually finds some excuse to fail and not image the drive. Right now I'm trying to use it to clone an existing OS install to another hard drive and it keeps complaining about Grub not being found... why try to find it, just CLONE it from the source, you have one job!

I can use DD if going from a small drive to a bigger drive, but vise versa wont really work so that's why I'm in need of an actual imaging program. I currently rely on Acronis for this but I'm hoping to find an open source solution that is comparable.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Gparted can clone partitions.

Partclone, which is used in clonezilla's backend, is a nice cli tool.

Terabyte's Image for Linux is great, but it isn't FLOSS.

 

[ArisVer]

Clonezilla also has the small>big limitation. Would it be the reason it fails (apart from the Grub error)?

Quote:
"The destination partition must be equal or larger than the source one."

 

[Red Squirrel]

Clonezilla also has the small>big limitation. Would it be the reason it fails (apart from the Grub error)?

Quote:
"The destination partition must be equal or larger than the source one."

I was reading that actually, is that really a limitation? That seems to kinda defeat the whole purpose then, since I can just use dd if going from small to big.

I ended up using gparted copy/paste partition, and then had to run grub-install. After a bit of fighting I managed to get it all working. I had to resize the partition at the source first though, typically that's not something I'd want to have to do because if I'm making an image chances are I'm backing up a drive BEFORE I do such an operation. Guess I may have to just stick to Acronis if there's nothing comparable.

 

[ArisVer]

I am not sure as I have never used Clonezilla. When I used Linux for two years, dd was the tool I used together with GParted to shrink the partition to a smaller size. It is an extra step involving more time but it worked.
Actually I do the same process in Windows now too using MiniTool Partition Wizard Free.

 

[Fallen Kell]

I typically use partimage as part of the SystemRescueCD distribution. It makes decent backups which can be extracted into smaller sized partitions (as long as there is enough space for the data). You do need to backup other pieces of information as well since it only takes care of data and MBR. I suggest searching for "geek sheet bare-metal backup"

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah guess I'll stick to Acronis for day to day imaging. I figured there would have been an equivalent open source program but guess not, they all require way more steps. Acronis will do everything in one step + backup the boot part of the partition/drive. So I can take an image of a 1TB partition and save it to a 10GB image, for example, if only ~10GB is used. I can do it all in one go.

 

[Essence_of_War]

So I can take an image of a 1TB partition and save it to a 10GB image, for example, if only ~10GB is used. I can do it all in one go.

The reason I mentioned Partclone above was because it does exactly this. It clones the partition but skips anything marked as free space. No pre-shrinking of either the filesystem or the physical partition necessary.