cross-platform bare metal remote restore system?

[Elazar Leibovich]

When my parent's windows machine occasionally became too slow (as
most undermaintained windows machine does). I tried to ease the situation
like so:
I divided the windows into a minimal C:\ partition which contained the
windows directory, a d:\ which contained the rest of the data (program
files, documents and settings, etc), a hidden parition /dev/hda3 which
contained copy of the c:\ partition, and finally a small linux partition.
I hacked up a script that would once every X boots up the linux partition
that would recover the c:\ partition from the hidden partition.
That way, every once in a while the users would "feel" as if their windows
was reinstalled (a known cure for many windows diseases.

This didn't work out eventually, since some windows program assumed Program
Files is on C:\, without checking the registry, and behaved strangely.

I used partimage for this job, and was generally content. I don't recall a
single data corruption. Of course this is highly inaccurate estimation, so
use with caution.

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 3:11 PM, Ira Abramov <Lists-Linux-IL at ira.abramov.org
> wrote:

> Howdie people!
>
> Got a client that needs a test environment where the disk on one
> specific server (maybe more in the future?) are wiped clean once in a
> while (so the performance tests always start at the same state). They
> want the same machine to be at alternate times installed with one of
> several images, Windows and Linux. Naturally I prefer to skip
> proprietary solutions and go to open.
>
> One of the requiremnets is that the data is only wiped on one of the two
> disks in the machine, or preferably just a single partition (the OS).
>
> Stored images can go to the other disk, or a remote server. Naturally I
> prefer a remote server because then I'll be able to use it for other
> one-shot installs as well (such as virtual machines, or just future
> bare-metals)
>
> On the short list are:
> * OpenQRM (an overkill, and I think avoiding full wipe is not easy)
> * G4L (I know nothing about it)
> * Partimage/PING (donno it, and it seems unmaintained)
> * Clonezilla (seems like the best candidate ATM)
> * FOG (aka freeghost - seems pretty good as well)
>
> So... before I sink my teeth in, I'd love any recommendations or
> warnings that will save me time. If you have interesting horror stories
> that go with the warnings, that's even better :-)
>
> Thanks,
> Ira.
>
> --
> Dumb as they come
> Ira Abramov
> http://ira.abramov.org/email/
>
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> Linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il
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>
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