Comments on: “Ghost” Your Windows System for Free Using Open-Source Tools

By: Brian - TipsFor.us

Brian - TipsFor.us — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 03:02:29 +0000

JimB – Those tools are already part of the Puppy Linux CD, so there’s nothing extra to worry about. Just download the disk image, burn to disk, and boot from it. Good luck!

By: JimB

JimB — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:27:53 +0000

This all sounds good but I’m not sure where to start.
I figure I have to download Puppy, but do I have to find ntfs-3g, GParted and ntfsclone also. Do I put them all on the one cd to be the live cd?
The rest of your explanation sounds clear enough, but I’m just not understanding how to get started. Thanks for the good info.

By: Mark C

Mark C — Fri, 01 May 2009 22:43:38 +0000

Thanks for the great tutorial. I just ran it on my new Vista Business x64 box and it worked flawlessly. 65GB of OS, Apps and Files became a 25GB image file.

Notice that I used the partitioning tool that comes with Vista to create a storage partition (not GParted). It’s actually an amazing tool. No reboot required!

I booted Ubuntu 9.04 live CD, mounted the secondary partition and used Brian’s commands as is (just the names changed). Creating the image probably took about 60 to 90 minutes. Restoring it took about 20 minutes.

I look forward to using this technique frequently.

By: french-coast

french-coast — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 18:02:06 +0000

good e
ici j utilise <>
je stoke le ghost de la part C sur dvd-rw.
restauration de C 5go = 25 minutes
tink you macrium reflect free

By: CK_w

CK_w — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 09:54:17 +0000

NO ! I am NOT afraid of the Command Line !

I have done it. Using Puppy; “Ghosted” my working XP C Drive to a new partition in a harddisk connected via USB. I did not get the ultimate proof by overwriting my C Drive and seeing it re-boot. But I accepted the next best thing by checking that all the files in my C Drive are exactly showing in my ghosted partition.

To get the final proof. I intend at a later date to open up my computer case; disconnect the cable and power of my C Drive and plug them into the ghosted harddisk. If it boots. then there is the proof.

GParted treats every device the same; be it sda1 or sdb5 (this latter is on USB) Along as one has got the device numbers right, the imaging and restoring goes between partitions quite smoothly.

Overall, I am well pleased/

By: N.K.Raghavendran

N.K.Raghavendran — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:05:03 +0000

All this is fine. But in my laptop, (HP Compaq presario AU 6000 series preloaded with Vista Home Basic) g-parted does not work. I get the first screen on boot-up from my flash drive. It offers different choices, but after that nothing works. The same thing happens with clonezilla and different other Dard disk cloning and partitioning software. Can anyone tell me why this happens? Is it because the Bios itself has been engineered to ignore any program not based on Windows?

By: jakob

jakob — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:27:12 +0000

Gparted is the bees-knees, a complete must have for any IT pro.

By: Ghost Windows for Free with Macrium Reflect (A Visual Guide) | TipsFor.us

Ghost Windows for Free with Macrium Reflect (A Visual Guide) | TipsFor.us — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:17:16 +0000

[...] of the most popular articles on TipsFor.us. Back in 2007 I also wrote a complementary article on Ghosting Windows for Free using Open-Source Tools. I suppose you could say that finding free ways to “ghost” Windows is an obsession of [...]

By: Don

Don — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:36:24 +0000

Once the HD is ghosted, where is the ghost?

By: Alec

Alec — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:36:57 +0000

I’ve been messing with this. I’m thinking about using some tools to get the partitions and mbr brought over to the clients via udpcast also.

On Golden Boy
ntfsclone -s -o – /dev/sda1 | udp-sender –max-bitrate=40M –pipe “gzip -c”

On Clients
udp-receiver –pipe “gzip -dc” | ntfsclone -r -O /dev/sda1 -