mcdull Posted October 28, 2005 Share Posted October 28, 2005 In trial and error phase, it is important to have a restore point. cloning should be a good idea but with software to be use is questionable. I'd use Ghost 8.2 and tried to clone the tiger partition. It report 15G over 15G being used. It costed me 25 minutes to clone a partition and similar amount of time to restore. Are there any other programs that can do a smarter job? I am expecting 5 minutes on a (6GB / 15GB)partition. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/3881-any-clone-program-usable/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
urig-herb Posted October 28, 2005 Share Posted October 28, 2005 In trial and error phase, it is important to have a restore point.cloning should be a good idea but with software to be use is questionable. I'd use Ghost 8.2 and tried to clone the tiger partition. It report 15G over 15G being used. It costed me 25 minutes to clone a partition and similar amount of time to restore. Are there any other programs that can do a smarter job? I am expecting 5 minutes on a (6GB / 15GB)partition. I tried Acronis True Image. It worked like a charm with my two partition setup (Win XP, OS X). I didn't measure the time it took though. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/3881-any-clone-program-usable/#findComment-24836 Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrJägermeister Posted October 28, 2005 Share Posted October 28, 2005 In trial and error phase, it is important to have a restore point.cloning should be a good idea but with software to be use is questionable. I'd use Ghost 8.2 and tried to clone the tiger partition. It report 15G over 15G being used. It costed me 25 minutes to clone a partition and similar amount of time to restore. Are there any other programs that can do a smarter job? I am expecting 5 minutes on a (6GB / 15GB)partition. Ghost reports 15G of 15G used because DOS don't know the partition so every byte is copied. Don't expect that it will be the same to make an image from an XP and a oSX86 with a soft runnning in DOS or Windows (image from FAT32 or NTFS will be faster). In this case 25 min are OK. If it's to long for you drink a beer in this time Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/3881-any-clone-program-usable/#findComment-24840 Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcdull Posted October 28, 2005 Author Share Posted October 28, 2005 Ghost reports 15G of 15G used because DOS don't know the partition so every byte is copied. Don't expect that it will be the same to make an image from an XP and a oSX86 with a soft runnning in DOS or Windows (image from FAT32 or NTFS will be faster).In this case 25 min are OK. If it's to long for you drink a beer in this time Thanks for the info. Therefore I am looking for alternative based on linux so that it may recongize the partition better. Does the true image does this job well? BTW, it is meaning to have the ghost image with 25 minutes because a fresh install may take only 30 minutes. of course one of the alternative is to shink the partition to 6 gig..... but I definitly don't want it. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/3881-any-clone-program-usable/#findComment-24843 Share on other sites More sharing options...
would_pay_for_mac_on_x86 Posted October 28, 2005 Share Posted October 28, 2005 what is 15GB? is your partition the 6GB deadmoo or 15gb, i am confused by your message. Ghost reports 15G of 15G used because DOS don't know the partition so every byte is copied. Don't expect that it will be the same to make an image from an XP and a oSX86 with a soft runnning in DOS or Windows (image from FAT32 or NTFS will be faster). In this case 25 min are OK. If it's to long for you drink a beer in this time jager- what do you mean by this? i think you are referring to the fact that ghost doesnt know about hfsplus so it is way slower? i am surprised...i would have thought ghost could either dup a partition or not. if it doesn't know about a filesystem type (hfsplus), i would have thought it either would not have worked, or could be forced to copy anyway, but i didn't expect to hear about about a slowdown. so acronis recognizes hfsplus filesystems? i too would like to know about a linux copy method. why couldnt i do something like a : dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=64K wouldnt that work, across all filesystem types, including hfsplus and even unknown ones? or must a specify a partition #? like: dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdb1 bs=64K is there any limit on blocksize? why wouldn't i put bs=512MB , considering i have 1GB of RAM, wouldn't that be faster? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/3881-any-clone-program-usable/#findComment-24860 Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrJägermeister Posted October 28, 2005 Share Posted October 28, 2005 i think you are referring to the fact that ghost doesnt know about hfsplus so it is way slower? Yes, but it works at least. so acronis recognizes hfsplus filesystems? If you rescue disk/cd is based on DOS or Win no. At least it works but just a little bit slower (empty blocks are copied). why couldnt i do something like a :dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=64K Here you don't make an image. The output file (of) should be a path like this /tmp/image.img wouldnt that work, across all filesystem types, including hfsplus and even unknown ones? Yes Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/3881-any-clone-program-usable/#findComment-24863 Share on other sites More sharing options...
would_pay_for_mac_on_x86 Posted October 28, 2005 Share Posted October 28, 2005 thanks...let me try to understand this... using Ghost/Dos/Win you are saying: - a half filled ntfs/fat32/ext2/other known partition type partition copies twice as fast as a full partition? - a half filled hfsplus/unknown partition copies the same speed as a full partition due to copied zeros? and - how does this compare to using dd in terms of free space? now...as for ghost/dos/win.... so do you know why being filled or empty matters if ghost is a raw block copier, and why does it matter if the filesystem is known to ghost? i can theorize if it knows the filesystem type, it can read the volume table of contents and decide where are the files are and which are empty...but then its not really a sector copier anymore but a slow file copier so thats strange... finally, do the traditional mac tools work? ie - CCCloner - DiskImage clone facility - RsyncX Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/3881-any-clone-program-usable/#findComment-24866 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hagar Posted October 28, 2005 Share Posted October 28, 2005 coupla quick links: http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?showtopic=2783 says "no" http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?showtopic=3659 Diskutil & acronis work, apparently.. hope this is helpful.. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/3881-any-clone-program-usable/#findComment-24877 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miaplacidus Posted October 28, 2005 Share Posted October 28, 2005 In trial and error phase, it is important to have a restore point. A sensible idea. IMO, it's best to do the cloning from within OS X, using native applications as much as possible. Modern Linux kernels have hfs+ support, but I don't know how well they deal with all the relevant points (file ownership, permissions, links, resource forks). Outside my comfort zone to be sure. There is a tutorial for cloning an OS X system using Darwin commands. I've used it successfully to transfer a deadmoo install to a larger partition. You need to create a target partition first, and an HFS+ filesystem on it. Carbon Copy Cloner is a GUI wrapper around this together with various utilities. It's bread-and-butter for me for backing up my Macs, but there are reports of it not working on OSX86. why couldnt i do something like a : dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=64K wouldnt that work, across all filesystem types, including hfsplus and even unknown ones? This should work, if you want hdb to end up looking exactly like hda. See here for example. or must a specify a partition #? like: dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdb1 bs=64K This should also work if you are cloning one partition. See the same link above. There should be an entry for hdb1 in hdb's partition table with an appropriate filesystem type (af for hfs+). is there any limit on blocksize? why wouldn't i put bs=512MB , considering i have 1GB of RAM, wouldn't that be faster? Don't know if there's an upper limit to the block size, but you may run into a roundoff issue at the end of the copy with a very large block. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/3881-any-clone-program-usable/#findComment-24910 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sudar Posted October 28, 2005 Share Posted October 28, 2005 In trial and error phase, it is important to have a restore point.cloning should be a good idea but with software to be use is questionable. Why not use programs for Mac OS X? The latest release of "suncupx" is even in universal binaries! Here it goes: http://freeridecoding.net/en/02SYNCUPX Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/3881-any-clone-program-usable/#findComment-24935 Share on other sites More sharing options...
would_pay_for_mac_on_x86 Posted October 28, 2005 Share Posted October 28, 2005 hagar -thanks according to what you've found--- CCC does work...if you login as root... SyncUpX apparently too, thanks to Sudar The problem with both of these solutions compared to the orig posters and my question are they are both file copy level operations....the more files you have, the longer it takes.....compared to dd, ghost, and diskimage. IMO, it's best to do the cloning from within OS X, using native applications as much as possible. Modern Linux kernels have hfs+ support, but I don't know how well they deal with all the relevant points (file ownership, permissions, links, resource forks). Outside my comfort zone to be sure. Miaplacidus - thank for the links...we want to avoid using finder level tools like ditto, or ccc because they are very slow compared to sector copying tools... also the whole point of a sector level copy is you won't have to worry whatsoever about file level permissions, or even filesystem types...i dont believe... what did you mean about a "roundoff" issue? ok..to summarize my understanding.... ghost - has some very cool optimization features that, if it knows the FS type (only ntfs, fat32, ext2 i believe?) it actually can do a sector copy while at the same time ignoring blank sectors --- a very cool trick i don't think any other program can do that i know.... unfortunately, this won't help us copy hfsplus partitions quickly because in the case of hfsplus it copies blanks sectors... dd - also wastes time and space copying blank sectors, if i understand right. i suppose in both cases it would be best to somehow write zeros out to all unused sectors first so you could gzip it down reasonably...don't know what the cmd to do this is... one of the real beauties of moving to osx86 is for the first time being able to use sector level copy tools like these to shorten 2 hour finder level backup to 5 minutes....hopefully there will be a native x86 sector cloning tool like ghost that recognizes hfsplus partitions soon so that we can reap the benefits.... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/3881-any-clone-program-usable/#findComment-24946 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hagar Posted October 29, 2005 Share Posted October 29, 2005 i suppose in both cases it would be best to somehow write zeros out to all unused sectors first so you could gzip it down reasonably...don't know what the cmd to do this is... would the Erase Free Space function in Disk Utility do it? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/3881-any-clone-program-usable/#findComment-24986 Share on other sites More sharing options...
would_pay_for_mac_on_x86 Posted October 29, 2005 Share Posted October 29, 2005 yeah, you can click Options within that and tell it to write zeros...but that destroys the whole partition which is probably not what you what... in linux theres probably a way to write zeros to unused space with dd if=/dev/zero of=something i'd imagine if you could do this first, then gzip would pack the image down to the same size that ghost images might be, so that would be nice.... but still... i'm guessing that dd would still be slower as it still has to write the full image included empty space out first before it compresses it.... i could be totally off base with this though...hopefully someone who really understands who chime in Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/3881-any-clone-program-usable/#findComment-25004 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miaplacidus Posted October 29, 2005 Share Posted October 29, 2005 We want to avoid using finder level tools like ditto, or ccc because they are very slow compared to sector copying tools... also the whole point of a sector level copy is you won't have to worry whatsoever about file level permissions, or even filesystem types...i dont believe... Advantages of filesystem-aware cloners are that you can maintain a bootable clone (dd can do this too, but you'd need to adjust root device in the clone, etc), and that the filesystem can fully utilize the partition space after backup and restore. BTW I didn't find ditto slow; and certainly you don't have to ditto everything every time. Depending on your backup strategy, there are appropriate methods. what did you mean about a "roundoff" issue? Oh I'm probably wrong here, I was thinking of a tape backup where blocks trailing off the end of the tape could be an issue. i suppose in both cases it would be best to somehow write zeros out to all unused sectors first so you could gzip it down reasonably...don't know what the cmd to do this is... Why do you want to do this, if your goal is to save time? Both writing nulls on unused sectors and compression take time. Chances are these actions take more time than the time you save in the backup method. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/3881-any-clone-program-usable/#findComment-25008 Share on other sites More sharing options...
would_pay_for_mac_on_x86 Posted October 29, 2005 Share Posted October 29, 2005 Miaplacidus "filesystem aware" and sector/bock copying are orthogonal. you should really try a ghost sector/block level copy if you think ditto is fast...it is probably between a 5:1 or 10:1 difference in speed. i would like confirmation that ghost omits free space (saving time and spave) only when one of its known (ntfs, fat, ext) types are used? is this why ghost is so fast, is it faster than dd, and can dd be made to skip empty space too? preferably a sectory level tool that knows about hfsplus. my guess us we'll eventually see this now... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/3881-any-clone-program-usable/#findComment-25108 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Westwood Posted October 31, 2005 Share Posted October 31, 2005 I tried Acronis True Image. It worked like a charm with my two partition setup (Win XP, OS X). I didn't measure the time it took though. That program is sheer {censored}E. I can't even run it. "You need 2 drives." I HAVE TWO BLOODY PARTITIONS, SURELY THATS ENOUGH!! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/3881-any-clone-program-usable/#findComment-25466 Share on other sites More sharing options...
urig-herb Posted October 31, 2005 Share Posted October 31, 2005 That program is sheer {censored}E. I can't even run it. "You need 2 drives." I HAVE TWO BLOODY PARTITIONS, SURELY THATS ENOUGH!! That program is quite good in cloning whole disks. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/3881-any-clone-program-usable/#findComment-25483 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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