Clonezilla Guide for Garuda/BTRFS

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I was having a lot of trouble trying to get Clonezilla to work with a Garuda instance, it seemed to only work about 5% of the time for some unknown reason. The main issue is that when I booted grub would print "error: couldn't find the chunk descriptor", usually.

I'm using MacBookAir7,2 as I have access to hundreds of these very decent "free" laptops (from work) so I am imaging from one to the other and they all report as the same device (sda). I'm not direct cloning because the target disk mode on these laptops don't work with Linux, sadly. Please let me know if you know a solution to this. Even though Clonezilla (and partclone) claims to support BTRFS I just don't see it working properly. I would use the "Basic" mode in Clonezilla both for saving and restoring the disk image (NOT a parts image, though I tried that too), leaving all options default and it wouldn't work.

The following quick guide is ONLY for imaging identical machines (same reporting device, "sda" for example). I'm still playing around to see if I can image a MacBookAir7,1 which has a different storage device name.

It's very simple:

  1. Setup Clonezilla USB: Follow their directions for this (using the zip file) and also create an additional partition if your memory stick has enough free space to save images on (ext4).
  2. Create the image: Boot from Clonezilla USB, choose "savedisk" then when it asks use "Expert Mode" and leave all options default except you must select "dd mode". dd mode is the key to making this work right. Do NOT use partclone and friends!
  3. Restore the image to another machine: Boot from Clonezilla USB, choose "restoredisk" and this time use "Basic Mode" and leave all options default (you can skip checking the image).

Enjoy and happy cloning!

1 Like
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Will this guide work for cloning/restoring macOS?

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Since it's using dd it probably will, so long as you are on an older Mac withOUT a T2 chip! However any unique data that is SIP protected on macOS (user's TCC database, for example) may have issues on the cloned machine.

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clonezilla will do a full image file of the disk but not followup incrementals. is there a great simple to use app like TrueImage for our linux garuda systems? thx

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That's no full backup solution though. Only a file level restore.

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Now that's not quite right. I've been using Clonezilla for the past 5 years and it backs up the entire system including your own files (80,000) I have and it has never failed me. As an extra security, I use https://mega.io (Pro Lite) backup my own files.