Backing up NTFS partition: partimage or ntfsclone?

**madoka** · 03-10-2005, 09:32 PM

My laptop HD is failing, so I want to create an image of the NTFS partition before the drive fails completely. I tried using partimage, which appears to work fine, but the "experimental" status of NTFS support makes me somewhat nervous.

Then I found out about ntfsclone, which would seem to do what I want. However, the the website is marked unmaintained, so I don't know how outdated the info I read would be.

What I need is the ability to restore the saved partition onto a new HD, swap the new HD with the old failing one, and have the laptop boot as if nothing has happened. The new HD would be of the same or larget size than the old HD (though in the latter case, I'd want the extra space be usable as well).

Any suggestions as to which tool would work better?

**Markus** · 03-10-2005, 10:00 PM

When my 40 GB hda drive was starting to sound like a frog I bought a 80 GB to replace it with. hda had only 1 partition, hda1. On the new drive I made several partitions, but I made hda1 slightly over 40 GB. Next I plugged them both in, booted knoppix, su'd to root and gave the command: dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdb1 while the new drive was the slave on the cable at hdb.
This leaves out the bootloader so I chrooted and ran lilo, but If you just have windows you need to swap the new drive to master, boot with winCD into recovery console and issue fixmbr. When you then bootup the hd it will probably run scandisk but should work.

**KoD** · 03-10-2005, 11:52 PM

Another option is to use GHOST, but if the partition is damaged it might not work. I just recovered files from a defective drive using knoppix 3.7 with great results (but extensive period of time). I did it using Samba, Linux to Windows based network utility and just copied the files this way.

**madoka** · 03-11-2005, 01:34 AM

Originally Posted by Markus

When my 40 GB hda drive was starting to sound like a frog I bought a 80 GB to replace it with. hda had only 1 partition, hda1. On the new drive I made several partitions, but I made hda1 slightly over 40 GB. Next I plugged them both in, booted knoppix, su'd to root and gave the command: dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdb1 while the new drive was the slave on the cable at hdb.
This leaves out the bootloader so I chrooted and ran lilo, but If you just have windows you need to swap the new drive to master, boot with winCD into recovery console and issue fixmbr. When you then bootup the hd it will probably run scandisk but should work.

I know that dd would work, but it's also inefficient and slow. The fact that I have to back up over the network exacerbates the problem.

Originally Posted by KoD

Another option is to use GHOST, but if the partition is damaged it might not work. I just recovered files from a defective drive using knoppix 3.7 with great results (but extensive period of time). I did it using Samba, Linux to Windows based network utility and just copied the files this way.

I assume you're referring to g4u, not Norton Ghost. From reading its website, it seems to copy everything, just like dd. Also, it seems to be more sensitive to disk geometry; restoring to larger disks may or may not work.

I guess I could go to the store and pick up Norton Ghost, but I'm too cheap.

**firebyrd10** · 03-12-2005, 02:54 PM

partimage, as long as the disk isn't to fragmented you won't have anyproblems.

Also if there is a problem partimage will notify you and stop the copying.

**metavoid** · 03-13-2005, 11:10 AM

I used partimage to save an ntfs partition and restore it again.

**Irgu** · 03-19-2005, 07:11 PM

Originally Posted by madoka

My laptop HD is failing, so I want to create an image of the NTFS partition before the drive fails completely. I tried using partimage, which appears to work fine, but the "experimental" status of NTFS support makes me somewhat nervous.

Then I found out about ntfsclone, which would seem to do what I want. However, the the website is marked unmaintained, so I don't know how outdated the info I read would be.

The web site is unmaintained not the code. Developers focus on work instead of documentation as explained at http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/

Ntfsclone has been working fine for me for about two years now and it's stable since its original release. Partimage wanted to use the ntfsclone engine but Partimage development stopped about a year ago