OT: Clonezilla / PartMagic log?

I use ghost for linux. It is on the same Parted Magic disk. It has diagnostics in the window. I don't know about a log.

Found with Google in about 5 seconds. /var/log/clonezilla.log /var/log/ocs-netcfg.log /var/log/ocs-mount.log

The thing with Clonezilla is it technically doesn't clone the drive. It skips sectors it believes are not used. If you are really cloning drives and time isn't the issue, use ghost for linux. I think it is just a ncurses front end to dd.

No way. I don't have the time to do a sector by sector cloning of the drive. The only time I do that is when the filesystem is fatally corrupted and I need to make a copy in order to experiment with various methods of recovery. If it's a 1TB drive, then a sector by sector clone will be a 1TB file, which is rather difficult to manage.

Don't say compression because that's a great way to burn even more time, and where a one byte mistake will trash the entire image file.

On the other foot, copying just the allocated sectors drastically reduces the size of the image file, and the time to perform the image. On a decent dual core machine, I get about 2GBytes/minute to a USB 2.0 hard disk drive and about 10GBytes/minute to a USB 3.0 drive.

Note: Favored image backup program is Acronis True Image 2013. $50.

But then it isn't a clone.

I only clone when installing new drives. Time? What's an extra hour ever couple of years. I use g4l. Your mileage may vary.

I have a free copy of Acronis laying around. Fry's has it free with rebate once in a while. But I use g4l because it works.

It does if you *tell* it to. The default behaviour is to be smart and do as little as necessary, where it can. One of the "advanced" options is to select what tool to do the clone with ...

It also does (clone) if it discovers an encrypted partition and just goes straight to using "dd". It has no other choice.

Doesn't that give problems when reading or writing bad sectors? Furthermore, ASSuming a perfect destination drive, if the source drive has bad sectors, then it seems it IMPOSSIBLE to make a "forensic" (aka exact) copy? How does one write a bad sector? One that has "soft" errors? One that gives the controller IC fits? What about formatting dropouts? Have fun, sweetheart...

Exactly. Acronis scrambles FAT directories, diddles the partition type byte, as well as changes partition pointer values. Fixes by PTEDIT (from PowerQuest Partiton Magic) are easy when you know what you are doing. But why bother when there is other software that WORKS (and at lower cost)?

Honey Boo Boo, G4l incorporates dd-rescue, so it handles bad sectors. Enough lip from you, young lady.

Are you telling me that it can EXACTLY copy errors like i mentioned? I seriously doubt it. I say that a "forensic" aka "exact" copy can be impossible.

Golly gosh sakes Robert. You copy the data and programs to the new disk and fix them there put that in the users machine ASAP and make the user happy. Then you take the misbehaving disk and use tools that do not mount the drive and figure what went wrong. Everything you need for forensics is intact and everything the user wants is restored as best you can in as little time as possible.

Sheesh.

?-)