Make Images if you have the Space


kizer

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For some odd reason I was watching a flick on my AsRock ION 330 with XBMC and it just froze. When I shut it down and rebooted it just appeared to go into a boot loop. I of course freaked out and thought well a while back I made an image using Clonezilla. I prayed and restored my machine. I was a few months off on content, but it gladly rescanned some of my missing Flicks and Tv Shows since its just copying over images and rebuilding the database since everything is stored on my unRAID server anyways.

 

Do yourself a favor if you can make an image of your drives and store them you just might have to restore like I did today. I've used Clonezilla and Acronis True Image on two separate times for well two different projects to save my butt. Just do it. ;)

 

10minutes and I was back in business. I've imaged both of my PCs, both laptops and my HTPC machine. Its so worth it.

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Yes images on unRAID server. I've made several images using Clonezilla and never tried to restore and several using Acronis True Image and have restored so I was sweating the restore of the Clonezilla one because well I don't want to go thru the hoops of reinstalling all my stuff on my AsRock ION because it works perfectly.

 

I do have a spare pro license of unRAID and yes I do have a copy of my flash drive not on my unRAID server because I'm guessing something like my laptop or other would be a bit more practical. That does remind me I should update my flash drive backup since I've been tinkering around with it lately.

 

I guess my entire reason for this was to just say "If you have the space use it to backup things that are as simple as your PC because I know we all have our collections on them, but its silly not to think about our PC's for a quick restore." I know many use CrashPlan to do backups, but why not image your entire machine for a quick restore especially something like my HTPC, which I don't even want to spend hours rebuilding and configuring when I think it took me 7minutes to restore an image. ;)

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Yes images on unRAID server. I've made several images using Clonezilla and never tried to restore and several using Acronis True Image and have restored so I was sweating the restore of the Clonezilla one because well I don't want to go thru the hoops of reinstalling all my stuff on my AsRock ION because it works perfectly.

 

Just curious which program you like better - Clonezilla or True Image?

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Clonezilla is free and True Image isn't, but with that out of the way.

 

Clonezilla uses a totally text based interface and can be confusing for somebody who wants a click click done usage. There is some getting used to. As well Clonezilla doesn't like to image a drive and then restore to a smaller drive. For example say your like me and have a 120GB drive, but your only using 5GB of it. You can't simply restore the image in a smaller drive like a 30GB SSD.

 

True Image uses a windows style interface when you boot to it and allows you to restore pretty much any size image to any size drive. Of course if your data is larger than the intended drive its not going to work, but it worked perfectly when I restored my 120GB drive to a 30GB for testing. True Image allows you to do incremental imaging too. So if you image a drive and then want to update it because you added data on your source machine it will. Kinda cool.

 

I don't think you can go really wrong with either. I've now imaged and restored with both and have had zero failures. My only complaint now is Clonezilla can't be restored to a smaller drive.

 

True Image also has a clone disk feature so you can easily install a second drive and then copy everything from primary to the second disk. My buddy did it recently when he upgraded his machine from a 1TB to a 2TB. Took several hours, but he turned off his machine unplugged his old drive and booted right up into his new drive with zero errors.

 

To create boot media:

Clonezilla you can either download a Zip for USB and you click on a batch file to make your USB bootable or an ISO to make a bootable CD.

True Image you run the program via windows and click on an internal app called "Bootable Rescue Media Builder" which allows you to pick either CD or USB.

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  • 2 months later...

I used the free version of True Image that came with a Seagate drive I bought to create images of 2 desktops and a laptop soon after I got my unRAID build up in May, and this week I was able to restore one of the desktops after the boot drive failed.

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Do you image your unRAID flash drive too?

 

I have a daily script that copies the flash drive to my main desktop, which in turn gets backed up to CrashPlan that I setup quite a while ago. I also finally got CrashPlan working on my unRAID box itself, so it backs up the flash drive there again as well.

 

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For some odd reason I was watching a flick on my AsRock ION 330 with XBMC and it just froze. When I shut it down and rebooted it just appeared to go into a boot loop. I of course freaked out and thought well a while back I made an image using Clonezilla. I prayed and restored my machine. I was a few months off on content, but it gladly rescanned some of my missing Flicks and Tv Shows since its just copying over images and rebuilding the database since everything is stored on my unRAID server anyways.

 

Do yourself a favor if you can make an image of your drives and store them you just might have to restore like I did today. I've used Clonezilla and Acronis True Image on two separate times for well two different projects to save my butt. Just do it. ;)

 

10minutes and I was back in business. I've imaged both of my PCs, both laptops and my HTPC machine. Its so worth it.

 

I use to backup saving an entire drive as an ISO but I found out the issue with that is I really only need 1/4 of the data in that ISO image. I went with Crashplan. I make sure I save any personal data or anything I want to keep is in my default user folder, which is backed up by Crashplan. If a machine goes down, all I need to do is reinstall the OS, a few software programs and then restore my personal stuff from crashplan. I found out when using an ISO the OS on that ISO gets out of date pretty quickly. I wouldn't want to restore an old OS or out of date system.

 

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I agree with the ISO getting out of date, but its a great way to get back up and running fast then you can use CrashPlan to restore whatever else is missing.

 

For instance I just got a new machine. I imaged the machine so I have a bare stock image. I then load up all my have to have items because honestly I really hate reinstalling some apps like antivirus, winzip, winrar and whatever apps you normally have. Make another image.

 

After than use normal methods of backup and if you have to return you can easily return. Why do I make two images? Well I've been known to screw machines up tinkering with them and if I install things that mess up the initial install I can always go back to a safe unaltered configuration. As well I can show Tech Support "Hey I haven't done anything" LOL ;)

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I've used True Image to do a back up from one hdd to another in the same machine, but how hard is it (or clonezilla) to make and restore backups over the network? I assume this is what would need to be done if you are keeping the image on your unraid server.

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With True Image you just pick your location on your network. Of course its going to prompt you for a login and password. I'm pretty sure when your in the screen you look to the left column for location and you pick your unRAID server. Pick your location on the drive use the login/password verify option, which of course will prompt you for your info. One set just a few clicks and wham you have an image on your server. To restore its pretty much the same thing.

 

Clonezilla its a little more work since its all command line and involves a lot more typing, but you are following the prompts almost as if you are doing a Linux install.

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