Topic : Brief :

Restore a computer from a Disk Cloning image using CLONEZILLA In case your computer is non-functional you can restore it using a previously saved image. However, it should be noted that everything on the computer will be wiped out and your computer will be restored to the state it was when the cloning was done. Use CLONEZILLA (free software) to restore your PC to a previous state using a previously saved image stored on an external hard disk. Your computer is on AC power (just in case you do not have enough battery especially if it is a laptop). You already have a CLONEZILLA boot CD (otherwise you need to download the ISO Clonezilla file and burn it to a CD using your preferred burner or a free burner like IMGBURN). You have set the CD/DVD drive as the first boot option in the boot sequence or you know what key(s) to press when switching on you computer prior to booting to obtain a Boot Menu so that you can choose CD/DVD as the boot device. [Note : this is specific to the brand and model of computer] You have noted the size of all your partitions and the size of your external USB hard disk. Clonezilla will take the bytes you have in Windows and divides them by 1,000,000 to give you the size in GB.

Proposed solution :

Prerequisite:

Steps: Start your computer normally. Insert the Clonezilla CD in your CD drive. Since your computer is not working it might even not boot into Windows. So after inserting your CD it is better to switch it off first by pressing on the power button on the computer and hold it until the computer switches off. Plug in your external USB hard disk where the cloning image has been saved. Restart you computer. Once it starts booting from the CD it will ask a series of question. I have used the default setting most of the time and have been successful in my operation. So the steps followed are: Action Clonezilla En-us.UTF-8 Description live (Default Settings) English (Default)

Dont touch keymap Start-Clonezilla Device-image Start Clonezilla Work with disks or partitions using images

Local-dev use local device (E.g. : hard drive, USB drive) Plug your USB drive (external Hard Disk if you have not already done so at the beginning) and press Enter The next screen will show all your partitions e.g. on mine it was sda1 210MB_vfat sda2 375GB_hg plus sda3 150MB_hf plus sda4 375GB_hf plus sdb1 4052MB_vfat These-are-di(In-Transcend-4GB-) (NOTE: your external USB disk will have a different naming e.g. if your internal hard disk is sda, your external hard disk could be sdb and also it is assumed that your know the size of your external hard disk). Here you must select your external USB Hard Disk where you have previously saved the cloned image by using the arrow keys and space bar (hint: it is usually the last one). Confirm (Yes) type y and press Enter / Top-directory-in-the-local-device (choose this default)

Press Enter to continue Beginner Beginner mode : Accept the default options

You will be presented with different operations to choose from Saveddisk <followed by its explanation> Savedparts Restoredisk 1-2-mdisks Recovery-iso-zip Chk-img-restorable Exit (Since we want to restore the WHOLE DISK then choose Restoredisk)

You will be required to locate and choose the previously cloned image on the external disk. If you have only one cloned image then only one will be displayed. If you have more than one then you will have more options to choose from. The next screen will show your TARGET disk, i.e., your internal computer hard disk which has crashed and on which you want to restore your previously cloned image. You will be requested to confirm twice for the go ahead. So type y and press Enter. When finished Press Enter to continue The last screen is as below (0) Poweroff (1) Reboot (2) Enter Command line prompt (3) Start over Choose Reboot - 1 CD will be ejected and you will be requested to press Enter When your computer reboots, you will have a fresh OS (depending upon when you did the cloning, i.e., when you just purchased it or after you have installed some of the software you need).

ChiefJoseph, 10 October 2012

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