Expert: Saed Shawwa - 10/25/2009

Question
QUESTION: Hi Saad,

I hope you have enjoyed your vacation.
You told me some time ago, that a free alternative for Ghost program is available. It is called clonezilla and you can find it at www.clonezilla.org

Well, I have downloaded the clonezilla-live-1.2.2-26.iso file in September and burnt it to a CD-RW compact disk. Windows folder information says that it is a Winzip file. In a Windows xp manual that I have obtained, it says that windows xp can zip files without the winzip program it seems. To do this, it says to click Start, My Computer and then click FOLDERS. But I cannot find FOLDERS here. Winzip program is not free any more so I am very keen to find out how to zip and unzip files using windows xp. Can you show me how to use the zip facility on my Windows xp please ? I have windows xp professional sp3.

Before I take the big step and try using clonezilla on my computer, I was wary and wanted to use the Backup facility of Windows xp. I used the Backup facility in Windows xp to back up all the information on my computer and saved the backup file onto my slave drive and made a 3.5 inch recovery floppy disk. But if my master drive gets bust, will the backup file on my slave drive be able to restore my computer back to its working state as the Norton Ghost program used to do for me with Windows 98 ? Will I need to throw away the busted drive or will formatting it enable me to use it again ?

Thank you Saad.



ANSWER: Hello Trigan how are you doing

i think you didnt burn the iso file correctly , iso file is an image of a cd/dvd contains all the files and boot informations that was on a cd and compressed into one file for later burning
you need a program to burn this iso file into the cd ,it shouldnt be the iso file on the cd when you burn it.

so here is tool that can burn iso file directory into cds/dvd
http://www.freeisoburner.com/
download it and use it to burn the clonezilla iso file that you downloaded it.

about the intergrated compressed file handling in windows xp , it only supports ZIP files not ISO or any other compression extentions such as rar or 7zip etc..
usually if the file is a zip file all what you have to do is right click on that file and choose extract all

and check this website it will give you more informations about zipping/unzipping zip files using microsoft windows built zip tool
http://it.cas.psu.edu/training/howto/encomputers/zip.html

the windows xp backup utility will not backup or create a compelete image of your hard drive , that options was added in microsoft windows vista and microsoft windows 7 lately
it will only create backups of files and registry settings , but not the boot sectors , so if you hard drive got corrupted , you will have to install windows first then use the backup file to restore it

nortron ghost clonezilla and other free and non free tools create a full image of your hard drive as it is , if anything wrong happens to your system or the hard drive you can use the image to restore your system to what it was on the date that you created the image at. you dont have to install windows then restore your settings with imaging you just plug in the cd/dvd and then reimage your hard driver and after its done you are ready to go and use the system

but just make sure to read the clonezilla manual really good before you try it out.

let me know if you need anything else
take care and have a nice day



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Hello Saad,

Once again I am very impressed by your answers. You can explain difficult things like no other expert I have consulted can.
You are absolutely right. I need an iso burner to burn the clonezilla iso file onto cd.

I downloaded the freeisoburner and placed a non-empty 700 MB CD-RW compact disc and erased its contents. I tried using the freeisoburner application to burn the iso file but it gave me the following message.

Failed to write ISO image. Error Hardware Error 14848.
Any idea what is wrong ?

The good news is that I found a program that could do the job at :

http://pcworld.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.pcworld.com/down

but it worked best when I slowed down the recording speed to 2x and closed the CD and My Computer folders before I clicked on Burn.

Okay so I now have a Clonezilla bootable CD and I have ensured in BIOS that it will boot a cd first.

I have read the Clonezilla Live.doc
Am I correct in thinking that I need to have a slave drive in order to save the disk image of my master drive ?
I only have 256 MB of RAM. Is this enough ? Is it best to go to c\windows\temp folder and erase the .tmp files in there before I make a disk image of my master drive ?

Regarding the Keyboard layout. I am in the UK but it could be a US keyboard layout. Not sure.  How can I find what my keyboard layout is for certain ? The keyboard is connected with a PS/2 plug and not a USB plug.

Thanks once again, Saad.


Answer
Hello Trigan

that error shows up because of 1. the cd is bad 2.drive writing speed is not support or is set to a high speed that is not supported by the device and the cd it self it self.

so slowing down the speed helped burning the iso file

well yes you need a slave drive or external hard drive "USB devices: to save the image on , because usually its going to be a big image and it wont fix on a cd/dvd.
but there is an option as i remember "if you look it up in the document you will find it " it will split the image into cds , if you want to recover directly from cds/dvds and not use external hard drives or slaved hard drives , but with that case you will be using a lot of cds to do that if you have large amount of data
so that why everyone goes with external hard drives or slaved hard drive its faster and more secure and you can save too many images "based on the free space" like you created an image on jan1 with microsoft office installed , then you recreated another image on feb 1 with a new program or programs installed for example adobe cs3 and autocad , the second image will have office and adobe and autocad bundled with it.
if one day you wanted to restore an image that only have office in it and you dont care about the other programs you installed , use the image that was created on jan 1

imaging if you are going to do that with cds , how many cds you will have ? :)

256 is enough the memory is not going to be used heavily on imaging but it may slow down the restoration process.

yes before you image your system , make sure to clean it from temp files , and internet temporary files empty recycle bin , defrag the hard drive first before you image it , to help making the image size smaller.

about the keyboard layout
The United Kingdom and Ireland use a keyboard layout based on the 48-key version defined in British Standard BS 4822.It is very similar to that of the United States, but has an extra key, includes £ and € signs

to make it easier the US uses US $ , UK they use €
they both function the same way with some letter deferences , but the E is and E and the A is an A , only the symbols are changed to be localized for the country currency.
so it up to you if you want a US or UK layout

have a good day