[SOLVED] Syetem Image

How do you make a system image in Zorin? I currently have Z9 Core on an old drive, alongside W7, but it's an old drive and could fail anytime. I also have Z9 Ultimate on another drive, but that installation has problems, and I would like for now to migrate Core to that drive and replace it. I have Macrium Reflect Free. Do I just use that? I've never made a system image in Linux, and just want to make sure I do it right.

Hi, Please be aware, the How-tos and Tutorials section is for just that - not for posting questions but for posting solutions for others!

Macrium Reflect gets a lot of mentions on the City forum where I live - I have never used it.

Another one that is free (and based on Ubuntu) is 'redobackup.org' - this will back up the whole image.

An alternative to backing up on a failing drive is to get a new drive (the decision here will depend if your rig supports both PATA (old IDE drives) and the newer SATA drives - you can use Clonezilla to copy your failing hard drive to a new one but you must remember to copy the mbr too!

http://redobackup.org/

The interface of redobackup is astonishingly simple and is very accurate at recognising drives - a 500 Gb backup takes approximately 20 minutes if memory serves me correctly (which it doesn't at the moment!)

Thanks Swarfy. Sorry, I posted in the wrong place by mistake...

I also looked at these threads: http://ask-leo.com/can_i_create_a_backu ... ronis.html and: http://alternativeto.net/software/macri ... form=linux.

I could clone the whole disc, which would preserve the copy of W7 along with Zorin, but I'm thinking of just doing Zorin, putting it on its own dedicated drive, and then installing an image of W7, made before Microsoft started "preparing" our computers for W10, on that original drive.

mdiemer wrote:Thanks Swarfy. Sorry, I posted in the wrong place by mistake...

I also looked at these threads: http://ask-leo.com/can_i_create_a_backu ... ronis.html and: http://alternativeto.net/software/macri ... form=linux.

I could clone the whole disc, which would preserve the copy of W7 along with Zorin, but I'm thinking of just doing Zorin, putting it on its own dedicated drive, and then installing an image of W7, made before Microsoft started "preparing" our computers for W10, on that original drive.

The only issue with that is it may not copy your GRUB file which I assume is on the mbr of the drive - so that being the case I would edit your current GRUB file if Windows is set as the first OS to boot to be the other way round, use Clonezilla to copy your Zorin partition and your mbr.

At this point, I am thinking to try reinstalling Zorin Ultimate, or, failing that, reinstalling Zorin core. BTW, to answer the question of where I got the DVD - I made it myself, but on Zorin. With my other Zorin OS,( core), I made the DVD in Windows. So I may try that again. The Core version works really well, I love it. That's why I was trying to copy it to my good drive, but if I can get Ultimate to work right I'm sure it will be worth it.

I tried to burn a new DVD of Z-ultimate, this time using Windows and an image file burner. However, when I downloaded Z9U, I ended up with a Z7 file. Not sure what to do with it. Apparently I need to uncompress it, but I don't know if I would then have a burnable file or not. Until I get an answer, I'll see if I can burn a new disc in Zorin Core, with the tips Swarf and Wolf have provided. I think I still have the Z9U download.

I gave up on Ultimate, have installed Core on my other drive. I'll have to rebuild everything, but it works, the DVD I made for it must be OK. The Ultimate DVD definitely had problems. For example, I couldn't configure my Outlook account in Thunderbird. I did it very easily with Core. If there is anything on ultimate I feel I must have, I understand I can download anyway, so all good.

Hi, Just to clarify somethings regarding Ultimate - the hash/md5 sum is for the .7z file not the extracted .iso - so check the md5sum you should have been provided by email together with the password to unlock it. The main things that you will be missing are about 3 other styles of desktop (Unity, Win2k and Mac) - which can be replicated with other Panels. The main thing you won't get is Zorin Background Plus (animated desktop with the movie of your choice on a loop. The main ones Zorin provides are a moving image of the default wallpaper and a moving 'space' wallpaper - like the old Windows screensaver a.k.a. 'The Final Frontier'.

Also the only burner I found to work well in windows is imgburn.com - get it from https://ninite.com so you avoid all the advertising on their site and get something else instead.

I only tried 'infrarecorder' once on Windows and kept to safe guidelines of lowest speed etc and I still got a coaster on first use so it was removed forthwith!