The Technoblog

I came with a very basic need: copy a Hard Disk Drive to another one. Well, there were some constraints:

• The HDD is used in a Network Attached Storage (NAS) running Linux, thus data on it are in native Linux format.
• The source HDD is twice the size of the target HDD, while that actual data volume is of course smaller than the space available on the target HDD.

Trust me, doing this “simple task” turned into a 3 days (and nights) nightmare. The good side of this, is that I (re-) discovered fantastic tools everyone should be aware of. All this “Tools Suits” are a collection of useful tools, compiled over a bootable CD, or even bootable usb stick. My advice: you should select the compilation that better fit your need and make a bootable CD now. The day your computer will stop booting, you’ll thank me

Howto Use a USB stick or bootable CD

To run a bootable CD or bootable USB stick, you may need to do more than just inserting the media. Or not. So, get a first try: insert the media, and reboot your computer. If your computer starts Windows (or MacOS, or Linux or whatever you used to run), then you indeed have to do something more. You’ll have t tell the computer to look for a bootable external media: it’s either an option during computer startup sequence (known as POST), like pressing the F8 key like crazy on some ASUS motherboard based computer, or holding donw the ‘c’ key on a recent MacBook. If you don’t find such option, your last chance is to go to the “BIOS SETUP” (again, press a specific key, may be [F1], may be [DELETE], may be [F10]… depending on your computer: read the manual … or the screen!), go to the “BOOT” submenu, then change the order to have your media booting first. However, remember that if you forget to change it back, your computer will always try to boot from the removable media first… if an infected media is inserted, you’ll infect your computer while booting (this is probably the oldest computer virus infection scheme: bootable floppies). Finally, keep in mind that even if almost 100% of “running” computers are able to boot from a CD (while it was not true in 90’s for instance), some of them may not be able to boot from a USB stick. Especially if the stick is not plugged directly to the computer, but through an USB hub. If this is the case, try again with the USB stick plugged directly to any of the computer USB port. The way to get the bootable media depends on the “Tools suit”:

Ultimate Boot CD

The Ultimate Boot CD is a collection of “DOS-Like” tools. Being “DOS-Like” doesn’t means that you will need to learn complex command lines: most of the included tools comes with a delicious 90’s  “graphical” interface:

The included tools range from diagnostic to repair, in various areas:

• Motherboard tools (CPU, memory, peripherals, …)
• Hard Disk Tools (vendor specific and universal partition and cloning tools)
• Filesystem Tools (NT password, AntiVirus, …)
• Miscellaneous Tools (Network, DOS & Linux boot disks, …)

UBCD USB stick or CD creation

To build a CD, you just need to download the ISO image and use any burn software. To get a bootable USB stick, it’s a bit more complicated: First, you will need to either burn the ISO file to a CD, or extract the files within the ISO file to your hard disk using a suitable utility. Then, use the included tools\ubcd2usb\ubcd2usb.bat to write UBCD to your USB memory stick. Note that ubcd2usb.bat will format and erase your entire USB memory stick. And remember: some of the UBCD apps may not work when started from the bootable USB stick.

UBCD4Win

UBCD4Win stands for Ultimate Boot CD For Windows. As it’s name suggests, it’s the Windows based version of the Ultimate Boot CD mentionned above. Once you’ve booted on the UBCD4Win, you’ll experience a classical WinXP environnement, allowing to run Windows Applications and tools.

Among the provided tools, you’ll find:

• Disk cloning and partition tools
• Anti-Virus softwares
• A bunch of drivers for various disk, LAN and other interfaces
• Disk, memory and benchmark diagnotic tools
• Some commercial tools (licence to be purchased separately)

Howto create a UBCD4Win Bootable CD

Due to the WinXP boot environnement, you’ll not download an ISO image, but a tool allowing to build a bootable CD. And you will need a Windows XP (SP1 or SP2) original CD. So the steps are:

1. Download latest Ultimate Boot CD for Windows
2. Install the configuration tool
3. Run the configuration tool, generate an ISO image
4. Burn the Iso image onto a CD

SystemRescueCD

The SystemRescueCd is a Linux system rescue disk useful for administrating or repairing your system and data after a crash. It embeds various Linux environments, from command line to graphical ones. The SystemRescueCd is available is several versions: one for x86 compatible architecture (PC’s and Intel MacBooks), one for SPARC (SUN), one for PowerPC (older Mac computers). It comes with a lot of linux software such:

• as system tools (parted, partimage, fstools, …)
• basic tools (editors, midnight commander, network tools…)

As most of the tools are graphical, newbie should not be afraid by the “Linux world”. However, beware: Unix command lines won’t ask you “are sure?”. It will obey, whatever you ask them to do. Even erase your main Hard Disk Drive in 2 secs. So, think twice when using command line tools!

Howto burn a SystemRescueCD or create a bootable USB stick

To burn a SystemRescueCd, it is as simple as download the ISO image and burn the image onto a blank CD. However, make sure to download the correct ISO file:

• The x86 edition supports both 32bits (IA32) and 64bits (AMD64 / EM64T) processors will probably be the one for you, even if you have a Intel based MacBook.
• The SPARC edition is also available if you have an hardware based on the Sun architecture.
• The PowerPC edition is needed for older Mac Computers, but may work for other PowerPC based computing units, like some NAS.

To get a bootable stick, some more steps are required, as explained on the SystemRescueCd Wiki.

CloneZilla

The CloneZilla bootable CD is focusing on one system administrator activity: making system disk image and duplicating the image over several computer for either repair, student classroom reload or computer deployment. Clonezilla is available in two versions: Clonezilla live and Clonezilla SE (server edition). Clonezilla live is suitable for single machine backup and restore. While Clonezilla SE is for massive deployment, it can clone many (40 plus!) computers simultaneously. Clonezilla saves and restores only used blocks in the harddisk. This increases the clone efficiency: 10 minutes to clone a 5.6 GBytes system image to 41 computers via multicasting! Duplicate IP addresses and computer names can be avoided using drbl-Winroll, also written by the CloneZilla team. Clonezilla is using several Linux tools:

• DRBL,
• Partition Image,
• ntfsclone,
• partclone,
• udpcast

HowTo create and use a Clonezilla bootable media

Making a bootable CloneZilla live CD/DVD is pretty easy: download the Clonezilla live ISO image and burn it. Making a bootable CloneZilla Live USB stick is a bit easier than usual: no need to burn a CD! To make your USB flash drive or hard drive bootable, first download Clonezilla live zip file and extract the files on your USB flash drive or USB hard drive. Then, make it bootable on a MS Windows or GNU/Linux computer (look at the CloneZilla instructions). To setup a CloneZilla Server, read carefully the CloneZilla documentation! Important CloneZilla Live password information: Two accounts are available:

1. account “user” with sudo privilege, password is “live”,
2. administration account “root”, no password. Therefore you can not login as root, the only way to get root privilege is to login as user, and run “sudo su -” to become root.

Bart’s PE

I could’nt close this review without a mention of Bart’s Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD. Developped from scratch by Bart Lagerweij, it opened a new Era in home (and company) computer deployment. Inspired by Microsoft WinPE, and application only available to Microsoft Software Assurance Members.

So, if you want to generate your own BartPE bootable CD, you should have a look at the PE Builder software written by Bart. Of course, you’ll still need a WinXP original CD, like for UBCD4Win… which is indeed based on Bart’s PE Builder Software.

What about you ?

Do you have any experience to share using one of this tools, or even another bootable media to suggest? Feel free to post your comments!

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