#Usbit usb image tool install
#Usbit usb image tool windows

#Usbit usb image tool windows

From my experience, this works with Ubuntu system partitions but not with Windows ones. If you try to copy the system partition you get an error soon enough:Īlso, one has to take notice that the back-up and the restoration of bootable partitions are both risky procedures and that a back-up of valuable/sensitive data should be first done in a different way (by copying the data instead of the entire partition, etc). The system partition is the one marked with a star. Therefore, in order to back up your system partition you have to boot in a usb live system - or, as seen in the above image, in a separate (multi-boot) system. Obviously, a partition cannot be copied while in use: it needs to be unmounted so it doesn't suffer changes during copying (that is self-evident). Launch/search as 'Disks', or run as gnome-disks.Ī live Ubuntu (or derivatives) live-session usb-stick.

#Usbit usb image tool install

Or sudo apt-get install gnome-disk-utility We have a GUI available in Ubuntu, called 'Disks' ( gnome-disks) and comes default in later Ubuntu.

However, if you want a 'friendlier' utility à la Norton Ghost then this suggestion might not be for you. However, if you are restoring the backup to the same exact hard drive, you don't need to worry about this at all. The picture gets even muddier when you are trying to restore entire disk copies. However, you can always expand the partition after you've restored the backup using gparted or parted. There is one limitation though, when restoring the backup: The partition needs to be the same size (or bigger) as the partition you took the image from, so this limits your options in case of a restore. You can use this same technique to make rote copies of entire partitions to make clones of your computer. You can then use any compression program (gunzip, zip, bzip) to compress the file for storage. You can use the exact same command to back up the entire hard disk (replace hda1 with hda). When you backup /dev/hda1 this partition should be unmounted (or mounted read-only) to avoid potencial corruption. Make sure you are on a larger partition or on a secondary drive and perform the following command:ĭd if=/dev/hda1 of=./part1.image to backup (repeat for different partitions)ĭd if=./part1.image of=/dev/hda1 to restore.

The most straight forward way to make a raw image of your partitions is to use dd to dump the entire partition to a single file (remember the OS access the partitions /dev/sda1 through a file interface). For example, /dev/hda or /dev/sda would refer to the first hard drive in your system (hda vs sda depends on the hard drive), and /dev/hda1 would refer to the first partition on your hard drive. There are a multitude of 'nodes' in /dev/ that are interfaces to almost all the devices on your computer. If you want the 'UNIX' way of accomplishing this, then read on.Īll references to the file system and hard disks are located locally on the virtual /dev/ filesystem. It's essentially a low level byte-for-byte copy utility. Dd is the low level utility that you can use to accomplish this task.