Officially, Clonezilla does not support cloning from a larger hard drive to a smaller one. While this may seem counter-intuitive there are some situations where you may want or need to do this. Such as with my job when images have been created from systems with 500GB drives and the new systems come with 250GB drives, or when going from a large traditional drive to a smaller SSD.If you are in this situation, I have found a way to get this done. We will have to do some prep work on the image (and re-create it) and then some additional prep on the destination drive before final imaging.
To prep what will be the new image we will be creating a new one (if its an already created image) and we will need to shrink the main partition first. You may need to restore your original image on the larger, original disk first and go from there. I use Parted Magic (which also has Clonezilla built into it) to boot the system and shrink the partition using GParted, making sure to give myself a good amount of flex room - we can always grow the partition on the new disk later. In my test I shrunk the main partition of a two partition Windows 7 drive down to about 100GB (160GB total drive capacity) to be able to fit it on a 120GB SSD. You will also want to note sizes of all partitions on the drive, in this case there was the 100MB system/boot partition and the larger main partition. After the partition has been shrunk and everything is smaller than the new destination drive, reboot the system and let the operating system boot and run its file system/drive check - if you skip this test CloneZilla will fail when we get to making an image from the newly shrunk drive. Once the checks are finished, reboot the system again and boot into the Clonezilla environment. Once we start up Clonezilla, set the options desired after choosing to work with the device-image option. When asked what mode to use, we will be choosing "saveparts - Save_local_partitions_as_an_image" and then go through the rest of the option sets, making sure to check all the partitions on the disk.
Once the new image is saved and after installing the new, smaller disk we will again boot into Parted Magic (or GParted Live, or a similar tool), load up gParted and edit the partitions on the new drive. First (if it is a new drive) we will need to create a partition table (I did an msdos table for this restoration) and re-create the partition theme from the old drive. To create an aligned partition (critical for an SSD) create a new partition with 2MiB of space preceding it (in my case I created the 100MB system/boot partition for the Windows 7 dive I was moving over to a smaller drive) apply the change then resize/move the partition and change the 2MiB preceding space to 1mb. After that, create the next partition - again starting with 2MiB preceding space and then resizing/moving with 0 preceding space (always choose align to MiB). Repeat these steps for each additional partition. You may have to mark the appropriate partition with a boot flag either in this step or after running Clonezilla.
Now that the new drive is prepared, we will again boot Clonezilla and this time we will be restoring the recently created image. When we are offed the mode option, we will be choosing "restoreparts - Restore_an_image_to_local_partitions." Set our options of source/destination when prompted and away we go. Once finished reboot and you should now be all good to go. Your operating system may run through its file system checks again and you will want to expand the partition to fill any empty space.
There you have it, a tested procedure to clone a larger drive to a smaller drive using Clonezilla.
Blessings,
Jesse
Monday, February 4, 2013
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
The "Perfect" Linux Desktop?
I have seen many posts detailing the "perfect Linux desktop." These are usual semi detailed posts on installing and setting up a newly released distribution and the software set added to the base packages.
There is one thing about open source Linux distributions that seems to attract many of the love it or hate it crowd: choice. To some, the fact that there are hundreds of different distributions all built around multiple configurations of a common universe of packages wrapped in a decent list of available desktop environments, makes for an environment where there is something for everyones taste and if you don't like it - there is another distribution to fit your needs. To others, this fact is one of the loudest criticisms sung to the tune of a drum labeled fragmentation.
So of all the readily availably and well done distributions is there a "perfect" Linux desktop? This is one of the yes and no answers that centers around personal preference. The team at Canonical made waves with the introduction of their in house GNOME skin dubbed Unity that shipped as default in Ubuntu 11.04. GNOME changed the much beloved look and feel of the 2.x series with the introduction of GNOME 3. Many users love these new UI experiences and many loath them. KDE and XFCE also have crowds of loyal users.
When it comes to distributions with a default, untouched install - my personal favorite, and what I would consider the best looking or close to perfect as you can get - was Ubuntu 10.04. Version 10.10 looked pretty nice as well, but I stayed away from it due to the limited support life. For me no of the current releases fit what I want untouched, but Ubuntu 12.04 (with its 5 years of support) configured with GNOME Classic (gnome-session-fallback would be the packed to install) gets my vote and is what I use currently. A close second would be a slightly customized XFCE environment in Xubuntu 12.04.
Software set is another area where someones perfect would be vastly different that another users. With my system I have mainly added additional multimedia programs, such as Gimp (2.8 from PPA), OpenShot and DVD Styler.
I have had an interest in created a customized installation CD for some time, and will begin an experiment in creating one using the Remastersys tool - based on my version of the perfect Linux desktop with Ubuntu 12.04 as the base. I will be documenting my experience, the steps taken and the software set used here on my blog. I will also try and get the final ISO uploaded for anyone interested in downloading my customized version of Ubuntu.
Blessings,
Jesse
There is one thing about open source Linux distributions that seems to attract many of the love it or hate it crowd: choice. To some, the fact that there are hundreds of different distributions all built around multiple configurations of a common universe of packages wrapped in a decent list of available desktop environments, makes for an environment where there is something for everyones taste and if you don't like it - there is another distribution to fit your needs. To others, this fact is one of the loudest criticisms sung to the tune of a drum labeled fragmentation.
So of all the readily availably and well done distributions is there a "perfect" Linux desktop? This is one of the yes and no answers that centers around personal preference. The team at Canonical made waves with the introduction of their in house GNOME skin dubbed Unity that shipped as default in Ubuntu 11.04. GNOME changed the much beloved look and feel of the 2.x series with the introduction of GNOME 3. Many users love these new UI experiences and many loath them. KDE and XFCE also have crowds of loyal users.
When it comes to distributions with a default, untouched install - my personal favorite, and what I would consider the best looking or close to perfect as you can get - was Ubuntu 10.04. Version 10.10 looked pretty nice as well, but I stayed away from it due to the limited support life. For me no of the current releases fit what I want untouched, but Ubuntu 12.04 (with its 5 years of support) configured with GNOME Classic (gnome-session-fallback would be the packed to install) gets my vote and is what I use currently. A close second would be a slightly customized XFCE environment in Xubuntu 12.04.
Software set is another area where someones perfect would be vastly different that another users. With my system I have mainly added additional multimedia programs, such as Gimp (2.8 from PPA), OpenShot and DVD Styler.
I have had an interest in created a customized installation CD for some time, and will begin an experiment in creating one using the Remastersys tool - based on my version of the perfect Linux desktop with Ubuntu 12.04 as the base. I will be documenting my experience, the steps taken and the software set used here on my blog. I will also try and get the final ISO uploaded for anyone interested in downloading my customized version of Ubuntu.
Blessings,
Jesse
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Sandisk Sansa Clip Zip 4GB MP3 Player
I had been debating getting an MP3 player for sometime off and on and recently with some birthday money from my in-laws I finally purchased one. After some research and looking around on-line for something that would fit what I was looking for, I ended up purchasing a SanDisk Sansa Clip Zip 4GB model.
When I set out to look for an MP3 player I initially was thinking I wanted something with 16GB of storage to accommodate my approximately 8GB music collection and leave room for new music to be acquired without having to upgrade the device down the road. Well, the cheapest 16GB player I could find was around $90 and out of my budget as well as much more than I wanted to spend. Then I got to thinking there has to be a model out there with an memory card slot for expansion and I could get a budget model and slap in an inexpensive 16GB memory card and be good to go.
A quick stop at Best Buy on the way home from church and happy birthday I have a new 4GB MP3 player complete with micro SD expansion and included ear bud headphones, not bad at all for $39.99. Besides the memory card expansion, the Zip has an FM radio tuner, voice recorder and a stop watch feature. I will be testing the stop watch out when I start jogging again and find I use the FM radio quite a bit at work. You can also play audio books and podcasts with the Zip, provided they are in a supported format. The formats supported are the usual suspects of MP3, WMA, AAC and OGG Vorbis - and for all you audiophiles out there it even supports FLAC.
SanDisk advertises up to 15 hours of battery life and I have not been disappointed with the battery performance yet. I have had it playing for nearly a full work day and was at half battery. If you do happen to run out of juice during the day, even 5 minutes on the charger and you will have charged up enough to at least finish an entire album worth of music. I ran out of battery one day at work (and thankfully the USB connection to the Zip is the same as my work Android phone) and was able to finish the day out listening to music after just about 5 minutes charging time.
Compared to the nearest iPod in price (the 2GB iPod shuffle), you get double the storage (plus SD card capability), a color display screen, stop watch and FM tuner for less money.
The only drawback I have found so far is the way it utilizes M3U play lists. With M3U play lists all the music must be in one folder, anything in sub folders will not show up on the device when trying to play the play list. All in all I am very happy with the Sansa Clip Zip and would enthusiastically recommend it to anyone looking for a decent MP3 player at a good price. Throw in a 16GB memory card and you have a 20GB MP3 player for about $65 or less.
When I set out to look for an MP3 player I initially was thinking I wanted something with 16GB of storage to accommodate my approximately 8GB music collection and leave room for new music to be acquired without having to upgrade the device down the road. Well, the cheapest 16GB player I could find was around $90 and out of my budget as well as much more than I wanted to spend. Then I got to thinking there has to be a model out there with an memory card slot for expansion and I could get a budget model and slap in an inexpensive 16GB memory card and be good to go.
A quick stop at Best Buy on the way home from church and happy birthday I have a new 4GB MP3 player complete with micro SD expansion and included ear bud headphones, not bad at all for $39.99. Besides the memory card expansion, the Zip has an FM radio tuner, voice recorder and a stop watch feature. I will be testing the stop watch out when I start jogging again and find I use the FM radio quite a bit at work. You can also play audio books and podcasts with the Zip, provided they are in a supported format. The formats supported are the usual suspects of MP3, WMA, AAC and OGG Vorbis - and for all you audiophiles out there it even supports FLAC.
SanDisk advertises up to 15 hours of battery life and I have not been disappointed with the battery performance yet. I have had it playing for nearly a full work day and was at half battery. If you do happen to run out of juice during the day, even 5 minutes on the charger and you will have charged up enough to at least finish an entire album worth of music. I ran out of battery one day at work (and thankfully the USB connection to the Zip is the same as my work Android phone) and was able to finish the day out listening to music after just about 5 minutes charging time.
Compared to the nearest iPod in price (the 2GB iPod shuffle), you get double the storage (plus SD card capability), a color display screen, stop watch and FM tuner for less money.
The only drawback I have found so far is the way it utilizes M3U play lists. With M3U play lists all the music must be in one folder, anything in sub folders will not show up on the device when trying to play the play list. All in all I am very happy with the Sansa Clip Zip and would enthusiastically recommend it to anyone looking for a decent MP3 player at a good price. Throw in a 16GB memory card and you have a 20GB MP3 player for about $65 or less.
Friday, June 22, 2012
The Linux Nerd Way to Download a Digital Camera
Downloading a digital camera can be cumbersome and time consuming. But it doesn't have to be that's for sure! If you use a Linux system, I have a quick and easy way to download a memory card that I have been using for some time now.
Simply run the following command from a terminal window:
rsync -h --progress --stats -r -tgo -p -l -D --update --exclude=**/*tmp*/ --exclude=**/*Trash*/ --exclude=**/*trash*/ /media/CANON_DC/DCIM/101CANON/ /home/jesse/camera/Sort/
Obviously your source and destination will be different than mine listed here and the temp and trash exclusions are probably not necessary, but those were options I selected when I used Lucky Backup to create the rsync command.
It is also nice that the terminal keeps a history of commands and all I have to do is press the up key till I find my command and then hit the enter key. After downloading, I sort the pictures in dated folder and move them from the sort folder to the camera folder and I am all set.
Blessings,
Jesse
Simply run the following command from a terminal window:
rsync -h --progress --stats -r -tgo -p -l -D --update --exclude=**/*tmp*/ --exclude=**/*Trash*/ --exclude=**/*trash*/ /media/CANON_DC/DCIM/101CANON/ /home/jesse/camera/Sort/
Obviously your source and destination will be different than mine listed here and the temp and trash exclusions are probably not necessary, but those were options I selected when I used Lucky Backup to create the rsync command.
It is also nice that the terminal keeps a history of commands and all I have to do is press the up key till I find my command and then hit the enter key. After downloading, I sort the pictures in dated folder and move them from the sort folder to the camera folder and I am all set.
Blessings,
Jesse
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Gimp 2.8 Impressions
Gimp 2.8 has been available since May and I have it installed on my laptop and have had some time to actually use the updated version that was over three years in the making. While I hope the next release is much sooner, and I would loved to have had this available much sooner, I have to say that this one was definitely worth the wait.
The Gimp team has done a fantastic job, and like I mentioned in my last post on Gimp 2.8, I will not be going into full detail on all the new features. The single window mode works beautifully and is a simple joy to finally have. It was the first thing I did when loading up Gimp 2.8, switch to single window mode and get to work. They layer groups are well done, and the on image text editing is a dream.
If you have not upgraded to 2.8 yet, what are you waiting for?! You will not be disappointed and the update is worth every second it will take to get installed and configured. Coming up in 2.10 will be high bit depth support and further on in the development road map is script recording and payback. Exciting times for sure, and encouraging to see the improvements released and usable.
Blessings,
Jesse
The Gimp team has done a fantastic job, and like I mentioned in my last post on Gimp 2.8, I will not be going into full detail on all the new features. The single window mode works beautifully and is a simple joy to finally have. It was the first thing I did when loading up Gimp 2.8, switch to single window mode and get to work. They layer groups are well done, and the on image text editing is a dream.
If you have not upgraded to 2.8 yet, what are you waiting for?! You will not be disappointed and the update is worth every second it will take to get installed and configured. Coming up in 2.10 will be high bit depth support and further on in the development road map is script recording and payback. Exciting times for sure, and encouraging to see the improvements released and usable.
Blessings,
Jesse
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Gimp 2.8 Has Been Released!
Gimp 2.8 was a long time coming, three and a half years in the making as mentioned on the May 3rd release notice on the projects official page. This is great news with a truck load of improvements over the 2.6 version with many more to come. There have been plenty of write ups on the improvements, so I will not be going into them here with any depth. I will simply have a few thoughts on what has become one of my favorite programs that has replaced virtually all my Photoshop use on my Laptop (which runs Xubuntu 12.04. For a good write up on the features you will find in the new Gimp version you can check out this post on Webupd8.org.
I have always thought the Gimp program was one of the most promising open source projects out there and have always been frustrated with the painfully slow development of the program that comes from having a small group of core developers. According to the developers, this is one of the issues that will be remedied, starting with the release of the long awaited Gimp 2.8.
This is very exciting news, as the list of coming features are also long awaiting and much anticipated form the community. High bit depth editing is due out in the next 2.10 release and the one listed under the "future" list (with no milestone number associated yet) is the script recording and playback option. This is one I am very much interested in, as this feature is one of my favorite features in Photoshop and would be amazing to have in the Gimp.
With 2.8 out they have "fixed" one of the long standing issues that I believe may have been detrimental to more novice users adopting the program: Lack of the long awaited Single Window Mode. I have tested this out and I can say it is very nice to finally have and will only benefit users who are used to this standard.
Gimp 2.8 is worth the time to upgrade and I sure hope we see 2.10 released sooner rather than later.
Blessings,
Jesse
I have always thought the Gimp program was one of the most promising open source projects out there and have always been frustrated with the painfully slow development of the program that comes from having a small group of core developers. According to the developers, this is one of the issues that will be remedied, starting with the release of the long awaited Gimp 2.8.
This is very exciting news, as the list of coming features are also long awaiting and much anticipated form the community. High bit depth editing is due out in the next 2.10 release and the one listed under the "future" list (with no milestone number associated yet) is the script recording and playback option. This is one I am very much interested in, as this feature is one of my favorite features in Photoshop and would be amazing to have in the Gimp.
With 2.8 out they have "fixed" one of the long standing issues that I believe may have been detrimental to more novice users adopting the program: Lack of the long awaited Single Window Mode. I have tested this out and I can say it is very nice to finally have and will only benefit users who are used to this standard.
Gimp 2.8 is worth the time to upgrade and I sure hope we see 2.10 released sooner rather than later.
Blessings,
Jesse
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Application Review: Create Syncronicity
In my last post I had a brief review of Lucky Backup for Linux. It is a great program that I highly recommend for Linux users as a very robust back up situation. Unfortunately for Windows users Lucky Backup is not available. It took me a little bit of searching, but I have found a program available for Windows that works wonderful and is open source as well. The program is called Create Synchronicity and I would highly recommend any Windows users to download a copy and start putting it to use.
Much like Lucky Backup, when I have set this up on Windows systems at work (and for my dad's business) it is set for incremental backup where only new and modified files on the source side are copied over to the destination. Nothing is deleted on the backup destination and this program works flawlessly from my experience so far. It can also be scheduled to automatically run the backup at a set time, which I know also works well.
For my dad's business I have set up two Windows XP machines and one Windows 7 machine to automatically sync files to a mapped network drive (which is a share residing on a Linux server) after business hours. The first backup on the Windows 7 system took overnight and then some (two hard drives worth of data as the files from the previous workstation it replaced were copied to its hard drive) but since then the backups take significantly less time and are finished well before the start of business the next day. The Linux server then uses Lucky Backup to sync all the files now residing on it to an external hard drive.
I will definitely be installing this on my parent's new computer they are getting at home, scheduling it nightly and then I will sleep well knowing they are automatically being backed up. Check it out and you will not be disappointed.
Much like Lucky Backup, when I have set this up on Windows systems at work (and for my dad's business) it is set for incremental backup where only new and modified files on the source side are copied over to the destination. Nothing is deleted on the backup destination and this program works flawlessly from my experience so far. It can also be scheduled to automatically run the backup at a set time, which I know also works well.
For my dad's business I have set up two Windows XP machines and one Windows 7 machine to automatically sync files to a mapped network drive (which is a share residing on a Linux server) after business hours. The first backup on the Windows 7 system took overnight and then some (two hard drives worth of data as the files from the previous workstation it replaced were copied to its hard drive) but since then the backups take significantly less time and are finished well before the start of business the next day. The Linux server then uses Lucky Backup to sync all the files now residing on it to an external hard drive.
I will definitely be installing this on my parent's new computer they are getting at home, scheduling it nightly and then I will sleep well knowing they are automatically being backed up. Check it out and you will not be disappointed.
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