HOW-TO: Make a RescueCD on bootable USB drive with PartImage

HOW-TO: Make a RescueCD on bootable USB drive with PartImage (Clone Partitions)

This is something I've been trying to do ever since I got my Aspire One last week. After fighting with Clonezilla Live USB (tried 1.1.0-8 and older revs unsuccessfully), I gave up and went to PartImage Live USB, which worked very nicely.

These instructions are for Windows (because that was the machine I had to work with, although I also did some procedures -namely for Clonezilla Live USB- on a VirtualBox'd Ubuntu as well, and it worked - although slowly)

As far as the USB drive goes, I would use a 4 GB or more USB key if you intend to backup directly to the USB drive. PartImage also supports network backups so installing on a 256 MB USB key would work also if you have access to a network from your Aspire One!

To create the bootable USB Rescue CD, follow these steps:

1. If you need to reformat your USB stick (FAT32 is needed, FAT16 may work), you will need the HP Disk Storage Format Tool. Link for download:
http://www.noxtek.com/panties/files/1/b ... P27608.zip
The tool is also available from HP's site, if you'd rather use a known source (search for it yourself though)

2. For the sake of this howto, I'll use E: as the USB drive letter

3. Download the SystemRescueCD with PartImage here:
http://www.sysresccd.org/Download
I used v1.0.4 dated 2008/06/29 which can be downloaded directly from here:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/system ... g_mirror=1

4. Open an ISO extractor, or whatever utility you wish (mount in iso9660 works too) to access the files inside the ISO.

5. Copy E:\syslinux\syslinux.cfg to the root of the USB device (E:\syslinux.cfg)

6. Copy files and subdirectories in the ISO:\isolinux\*.* directory to the root of the USB device (E:\*.*)

7. Copy files and subdirectories in the ISO:\bootdisk\*.* directory to the root of the USB device (E:\*.*)

8. Copy ISO:\sysrcd.dat to the root of the USB device (E:\sysrcd.dat)

9. Just to make sure, all files have to be copied to the root of the USB drive (E:\) so you will get many files in the root, do not create subdirectories such as E:\isolinux\ on your USB drive

10. Open a command prompt (cmd.exe) and browse to your USB drive's root (E:\)

11. The the following command to install the boot files onto the USB drive:

E:\ > syslinux -ma E:

12. The procedure is done, you can now unmount the USB stick and reboot the Aspire One with the USB stick, pressing F12 at the boot to select the boot drive.

The SysRescCD instructions are here, along with Linux specific steps:
http://www.sysresccd.org/Sysresccd-manu ... om_Windows

Once you have booted the SysRescCD, you will be at a bash prompt, and you need to make one more thing before you start PartImage: mount the USB key as RW (as it's mounted as RO, like a CD-Rom, by default). To do this, issue the following command at the prompt:

# mount -o remount,rw /mnt/cdrom

You can then start PartImage by typing:

# partimage

The SysRescCD live USB also includes a graphical user interface which I haven't tried so feel free to explore a little.

There is a Manual on how to use PartImage here:
http://www.partimage.org/Partimage-manual_Usage

I've used this bootable USB rescue CD twice to backup, and twice to restore, and it worked successfully every single time. I've used gzip compression on the backup, and my 3.4 GB Linpus installation came down to about 1.4 GB compressed partimage file.


It's too bad the Live USB images for Clonezilla don't use the same linux core and mods as the PartImage, as I would really have lilked to try this one out, especially since it can backup entire disks (PartImage can only do partitions, as far as I can tell), but still, it works.


I hope this helps.