Great job on the video. Let me know if you have any issues or have any features requests. Rescuezilla v2.2 will be released in May 2021 (next month) and will have many new and improved features!
As a brief footnote, although *cloning* requires a destination drive equal to or larger than the source, those restrictions do not apply for *imaging*, as long as there is sufficient space on the destination drive for the compressed image folder. (Today, I imaged my 2 TB 990 Pro Win10 install, with 330 GB used, onto a 1 TB external drive, with the resultant folder about 250 GB in size...)
I was looking for an explanatory video on Rescuezilla for a friend who was having trouble trying to image his PC. Your video ticked all the boxes and I sent him the link. Thankyou for doing all the hard work on putting this together as you saved me a ton of work trying to explain the process to my friend. You did a great job!
*How To Backup To And Restore From Using A Single USB Drive* I posted this as a reply to a few comments, but thought to post as an independent comment so as being easier to see. 1) Insert thumb drive into Windows PC 2) Run diskpart 2.a) List disk 2.b) Select disk # (where # is the thumb drive you want to prep) 2.c) List disk (again and make sure the disk you want is preceded with an asterix) 2.d) Clean (this will wipe the disk of all data and partitions, so make sure you selected the correct drive) 2.e) Exit (to get out of diskpart) 3) In Windows, launch Disk Manager (this is easier than all the commands in diskpart) 3.a) Right-click on the drive you're wanting to use, and select Simple Volume 3.a.1) Fat32 3.a.2) 32K cluster size (I don't know exactly why this is important, but if anything else, my drives would not boot) 3.a.3) Set the size to 4096 (4Gb) 3.a.4) Name RescueZilla (same as if using Etcher / Rufus to write the ISO) 3.b) Right-click the empty space of the drive, and select Simple Volume again 3.b.1) NTFS (I'm using NTFS as I need this to be able to be read by and written to with Microsoft OS (Windows 10, Server 2019/2022, etc...) Why? Because as images are created for the various manufacturer and models of equipment, they will be store on the network, and copied to the RescueZilla drives as needed. 3.b.2) If using NTFS, default cluster size is fine 3.b.3) I use all the remaining space on the device 3.b.4) Name Images (this is what the partition is for, so why not call it by the intended purpose) 4) Windows can mount an ISO and it will appear as its own drive letter 4.a) Copy the ISO contents to the RescueZilla partition of your thumb drive 4.b) Make sure you can see all the files so you do not miss any system or hidden files Now the drive is ready to boot with, and you can mount the Images partition to save your back up to or restore from as this is not the boot partition that RescueZilla will not let you write to from within the application.
I dont mean to be off topic but does someone know of a method to log back into an instagram account? I somehow forgot the account password. I would love any tricks you can offer me!
Hello, i need help. Rescuezilla is here but whwn i press start, it only says "error: bad shim signature you need to load kernel first" I don't know what to do, ive tried other tutorials they dont work
Hi, I just got a new macbook m1 air and was wondering how can you backup macOs system, is it possible? I tried to boot mac and it did not recognise usb which i plugged in...
1:41 Is it possible to save the image onto the same drive you're imaging (to manage later)? I don't have other storage available to me right now, only one USB to boot Rescuezilla off of …and an Android smartphone with internal storage only. 1:59 Love the visual demonstration!
Thanks :) Unfortunately you can't put any images on the same drive as Rescuezilla. If it detects it as removable storage, you might be able to store an image on your Android smartphone (providing there's enough space), but a second USB stick/disk would definitely be preferable.
*EDITED:* This works, and I've been setting up thumb drives for the student workers to use to re-image hundreds of machines (No we cannot use SCCM, several of these are not connected to the network) --------------------- 1) Insert thumb drive into Windows PC 2) Run diskpart 2.a) List disk 2.b) Select disk # (where # is the thumb drive you want to prep) 2.c) List disk (again and make sure the disk you want is preceded with an asterix) 2.d) Clean (this will wipe the disk of all data and partitions, so make sure you selected the correct drive) 2.e) Exit (to get out of diskpart) 3) In Windows, launch Disk Manager (this is easier than all the commands in diskpart) 3.a) Right-click on the drive you're wanting to use, and select Simple Volume 3.a.1) Fat32 3.a.2) 32K cluster size (I don't know exactly why this is important, but if anything else, my drives would not boot) 3.a.3) Set the size to 4096 (4Gb) 3.a.4) Name RescueZilla (same as if using Etcher / Rufus to write the ISO) 3.b) Right-click the empty space of the drive, and select Simple Volume again 3.b.1) NTFS (I'm using NTFS as I need this to be able to be read by and written to with Microsoft OS (Windows 10, Server 2019/2022, etc...) Why? Because as images are created for the various manufacturer and models of equipment, they will be store on the network, and copied to the RescueZilla drives as needed. 3.b.2) If using NTFS, default cluster size is fine 3.b.3) I use all the remaining space on the device 3.b.4) Name Images (this is what the partition is for, so why not call it by the intended purpose) 4) Windows can mount an ISO and it will appear as its own drive letter 4.a) Copy the ISO contents to the RescueZilla partition of your thumb drive 4.b) Make sure you can see all the files so you do not miss any system or hidden files Now the drive is ready to boot with, and you can mount the Images partition to save your back up to or restore from as this is not the boot partition that RescueZilla will not let you write to from within the application. ===================== Originally posted, but this does not work consistently... _____________________ Create two RescueZilla boot drives: 1) can be small and really only for booting RZ, 2) a large USB with RZ installed. Now, boot with the first smaller USB Insert the second larger USB Run GParted and shrink the volume on the second USB down to around 4Gb (4096) Create a new partition in the space now freed up Format it to your desired type, I use NTFS because I want to be able to read this with Windows Now, when you boot with the large USB, the second partition will be available to write the image to / read from
what if I move the backup image to the stick with rescuezilla on it? would that work or does it need to be 2 usb storage sticks. thanks again for the video! really helpful!
Rescuezilla will completely take over the USB stick you install it on (you can't put backup images on it as well). For this reason, I'd just use a small capacity stick - 2GB is plenty. You can then either create your backup image on a second USB stick, an external drive, or network share. Thanks for your feedback.
*EDITED:* This works, and I've been setting up thumb drives for the student workers to use to re-image hundreds of machines (No we cannot use SCCM, several of these are not connected to the network) --------------------- 1) Insert thumb drive into Windows PC 2) Run diskpart 2.a) List disk 2.b) Select disk # (where # is the thumb drive you want to prep) 2.c) List disk (again and make sure the disk you want is preceded with an asterix) 2.d) Clean (this will wipe the disk of all data and partitions, so make sure you selected the correct drive) 2.e) Exit (to get out of diskpart) 3) In Windows, launch Disk Manager (this is easier than all the commands in diskpart) 3.a) Right-click on the drive you're wanting to use, and select Simple Volume 3.a.1) Fat32 3.a.2) 32K cluster size (I don't know exactly why this is important, but if anything else, my drives would not boot) 3.a.3) Set the size to 4096 (4Gb) 3.a.4) Name RescueZilla (same as if using Etcher / Rufus to write the ISO) 3.b) Right-click the empty space of the drive, and select Simple Volume again 3.b.1) NTFS (I'm using NTFS as I need this to be able to be read by and written to with Microsoft OS (Windows 10, Server 2019/2022, etc...) Why? Because as images are created for the various manufacturer and models of equipment, they will be store on the network, and copied to the RescueZilla drives as needed. 3.b.2) If using NTFS, default cluster size is fine 3.b.3) I use all the remaining space on the device 3.b.4) Name Images (this is what the partition is for, so why not call it by the intended purpose) 4) Windows can mount an ISO and it will appear as its own drive letter 4.a) Copy the ISO contents to the RescueZilla partition of your thumb drive 4.b) Make sure you can see all the files so you do not miss any system or hidden files Now the drive is ready to boot with, and you can mount the Images partition to save your back up to or restore from as this is not the boot partition that RescueZilla will not let you write to from within the application. ===================== Originally posted, but this does not work consistently... _____________________ Create two RescueZilla boot drives: 1) can be small and really only for booting RZ, 2) a large USB with RZ installed. Now, boot with the first smaller USB Insert the second larger USB Run GParted and shrink the volume on the second USB down to around 4Gb (4096) Create a new partition in the space now freed up Format it to your desired type, I use NTFS because I want to be able to read this with Windows Now, when you boot with the large USB, the second partition will be available to write the image to / read from
Does Rescuezilla literally makes a image copy of empty partition space? For example, Partition "C" drive is a 256GB hard drive which only have windows 10 which takes about 10GB of space, will Rescuezilla literally make a disk image of 256GB or disk image of 10GB? Thanks.
I don't understand why we need to download a "flash" program to "copy" Rescuezilla to the usb drive. Is it doing more than just copy the downloaded file? Can't one just do a file copy to the usb drive, or save the download to the usb drive directly?
Is the flash program turning the usb drive into a bootable drive? If that's the purpose it should have been stated explicitly so as to not confuse novices like me.
A computer cannot typically boot from an ISO file. Virtual machines can, but not physical desktop / laptops. Etcher / Rufus / etc are programs that read in the ISO and copy the content to the USB. There are certain files that are copied which make the USB a bootable device the computer will recognize when the BIOS scans attached drives looking for boot devices. Granted, he did not go into detail on this; it was just heavily implied.
16:20 Thanks for this awesome video. I want to use this to restore one Pop!_OS image to 15 PCs with the same hardware as the first. However, if we don't have a NAS device or server, is it possible to just put the folder with the image on a Windows public folder on the same WiFi network and then point to it on this step? If that is possible, how do I get the exact IP address for that shared folder for this step? //192.168.0.???
You're welcome. Yes, that should be possible. To find the IP address of your Windows computer, open the Command Prompt and type "ipconfig" (without the quotes) and press Enter. You should see the IP address listed next to the network adapter. If possible, it would be better to connect a network cable between your router and computer as imaging could take a long time over WiFi. Hope that helps :)
You can't boot the Pi from Rescuezilla directly, but if you connect the Pi's microSD card to your desktop PC/laptop and boot into Rescuezilla that way, you can then choose the microSD card as the 'Source drive' and create an image from it. Then, when you want to restore, do the same again, but this time select the microSD card as the destination drive. Just be careful that you don't select your computer's internal drive at any point, as you don't want to accidentally overwrite that! Hope that helps :)
Wrote a comment and it looks like it got deleted because I wrote an IP address as an example. Well, your loss youtube. Short version: For me, forward slashes "/" didn't work when I tried to save my image to a shared networkfolder on my Desktop PC. I had to use backslashes "\".
I think this is the best video on disk imaging. I just followed the instuctions and finished the job seamlessly. Thanks a lot!
Easy to follow, straight to the point, and no fluff. Thank you for the video!!
You're most welcome :)
Agreed. Great tutorial video.
Great job on the video. Let me know if you have any issues or have any features requests. Rescuezilla v2.2 will be released in May 2021 (next month) and will have many new and improved features!
Many thanks. It's great to get feedback from the official project. Looking forward to seeing what v2.2 brings :)
As a brief footnote, although *cloning* requires a destination drive equal to or larger than the source, those restrictions do not apply for *imaging*, as long as there is sufficient space on the destination drive for the compressed image folder. (Today, I imaged my 2 TB 990 Pro Win10 install, with 330 GB used, onto a 1 TB external drive, with the resultant folder about 250 GB in size...)
I was looking for an explanatory video on Rescuezilla for a friend who was having trouble trying to image his PC. Your video ticked all the boxes and I sent him the link. Thankyou for doing all the hard work on putting this together as you saved me a ton of work trying to explain the process to my friend. You did a great job!
Thank you for your lucidly clear explanation of Rescuezilla.
Very good and simple explanation
This is the best tutorial video for Rescuezilla I have ever seen.. thank you very much for your effort. It helped me a lot.👍👍👍
Clear and concise description, along with a professional presentation. Nicely done and Thank You!
Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for your feedback :)
This is a great tool that I did not know existed. Will back up my systems this weekend. Thanks for the video!
You're welcome. Sounds like that's your weekend taken care of!
*How To Backup To And Restore From Using A Single USB Drive*
I posted this as a reply to a few comments, but thought to post as an independent comment so as being easier to see.
1) Insert thumb drive into Windows PC
2) Run diskpart
2.a) List disk
2.b) Select disk # (where # is the thumb drive you want to prep)
2.c) List disk (again and make sure the disk you want is preceded with an asterix)
2.d) Clean (this will wipe the disk of all data and partitions, so make sure you selected the correct drive)
2.e) Exit (to get out of diskpart)
3) In Windows, launch Disk Manager (this is easier than all the commands in diskpart)
3.a) Right-click on the drive you're wanting to use, and select Simple Volume
3.a.1) Fat32
3.a.2) 32K cluster size (I don't know exactly why this is important, but if anything else, my drives would not boot)
3.a.3) Set the size to 4096 (4Gb)
3.a.4) Name RescueZilla (same as if using Etcher / Rufus to write the ISO)
3.b) Right-click the empty space of the drive, and select Simple Volume again
3.b.1) NTFS (I'm using NTFS as I need this to be able to be read by and written to with Microsoft OS (Windows 10, Server 2019/2022, etc...)
Why? Because as images are created for the various manufacturer and models of equipment, they will be store on the network, and copied to the RescueZilla drives as needed.
3.b.2) If using NTFS, default cluster size is fine
3.b.3) I use all the remaining space on the device
3.b.4) Name Images (this is what the partition is for, so why not call it by the intended purpose)
4) Windows can mount an ISO and it will appear as its own drive letter
4.a) Copy the ISO contents to the RescueZilla partition of your thumb drive
4.b) Make sure you can see all the files so you do not miss any system or hidden files
Now the drive is ready to boot with, and you can mount the Images partition to save your back up to or restore from as this is not the boot partition that RescueZilla will not let you write to from within the application.
Good stuff! Clear, concise and very thorough! 😊👌🏻
Thanks for your feedback :)
Thank you for making this useful video. Rescuezilla is such a versatile tool. Great job!
You're welcome. I'm glad you found it helpful :)
I dont mean to be off topic but does someone know of a method to log back into an instagram account?
I somehow forgot the account password. I would love any tricks you can offer me!
@Rayan Chandler instablaster :)
Great video 👍 Congrats on 1k!
Thanks for your support
There's something though you didn't mention: can you do incremental back-ups?
Might be worth installing your chosen Linux/Rescue toolset directly on the system in a small partition.
Very useful and interesting.
Excellent tutorial!!
Awesome Video! You Sir, ROCK !! Thank you
Thank you so much great tutorial, the peace of mind from having a backup is worth all the effort lol, cheers
You can never have too many backups :)
It helps me. Thank you!
Much Thanks!
You're welcome :)
THANK YOU SO MUCH
No problem :)
Thank you for an informative video.
You're welcome. Glad you found it helpful :)
My old PC is 5 years old - if my new PC is an upgraded PC, will it be possible to restore the image and update with the latest drivers ?
Excellent video thanks
No problem. Thanks for the compliment.
Hello, i need help. Rescuezilla is here but whwn i press start, it only says "error: bad shim signature you need to load kernel first" I don't know what to do, ive tried other tutorials they dont work
Hi, I just got a new macbook m1 air and was wondering how can you backup macOs system, is it possible? I tried to boot mac and it did not recognise usb which i plugged in...
Thanks alot!!!
My pleasure :)
1:41 Is it possible to save the image onto the same drive you're imaging (to manage later)? I don't have other storage available to me right now, only one USB to boot Rescuezilla off of …and an Android smartphone with internal storage only.
1:59 Love the visual demonstration!
Thanks :) Unfortunately you can't put any images on the same drive as Rescuezilla. If it detects it as removable storage, you might be able to store an image on your Android smartphone (providing there's enough space), but a second USB stick/disk would definitely be preferable.
*EDITED:*
This works, and I've been setting up thumb drives for the student workers to use to re-image hundreds of machines (No we cannot use SCCM, several of these are not connected to the network)
---------------------
1) Insert thumb drive into Windows PC
2) Run diskpart
2.a) List disk
2.b) Select disk # (where # is the thumb drive you want to prep)
2.c) List disk (again and make sure the disk you want is preceded with an asterix)
2.d) Clean (this will wipe the disk of all data and partitions, so make sure you selected the correct drive)
2.e) Exit (to get out of diskpart)
3) In Windows, launch Disk Manager (this is easier than all the commands in diskpart)
3.a) Right-click on the drive you're wanting to use, and select Simple Volume
3.a.1) Fat32
3.a.2) 32K cluster size (I don't know exactly why this is important, but if anything else, my drives would not boot)
3.a.3) Set the size to 4096 (4Gb)
3.a.4) Name RescueZilla (same as if using Etcher / Rufus to write the ISO)
3.b) Right-click the empty space of the drive, and select Simple Volume again
3.b.1) NTFS (I'm using NTFS as I need this to be able to be read by and written to with Microsoft OS (Windows 10, Server 2019/2022, etc...)
Why? Because as images are created for the various manufacturer and models of equipment, they will be store on the network, and copied to the RescueZilla drives as needed.
3.b.2) If using NTFS, default cluster size is fine
3.b.3) I use all the remaining space on the device
3.b.4) Name Images (this is what the partition is for, so why not call it by the intended purpose)
4) Windows can mount an ISO and it will appear as its own drive letter
4.a) Copy the ISO contents to the RescueZilla partition of your thumb drive
4.b) Make sure you can see all the files so you do not miss any system or hidden files
Now the drive is ready to boot with, and you can mount the Images partition to save your back up to or restore from as this is not the boot partition that RescueZilla will not let you write to from within the application.
=====================
Originally posted, but this does not work consistently...
_____________________
Create two RescueZilla boot drives: 1) can be small and really only for booting RZ, 2) a large USB with RZ installed.
Now, boot with the first smaller USB
Insert the second larger USB
Run GParted and shrink the volume on the second USB down to around 4Gb (4096)
Create a new partition in the space now freed up
Format it to your desired type, I use NTFS because I want to be able to read this with Windows
Now, when you boot with the large USB, the second partition will be available to write the image to / read from
Can you automate backups with this? I was thinking about letting my pihole scheduling all my backups automatically and have them store in my nas.
For that kind of functionality you want to take a look at the server edition of Clonezilla:
clonezilla.org/clonezilla-SE/
Hope that helps :)
Congrats byte my pi for 1k subs
Thank you
What if my main system isn’t showing up in the list of drives to restore?
what if I move the backup image to the stick with rescuezilla on it? would that work or does it need to be 2 usb storage sticks. thanks again for the video! really helpful!
Rescuezilla will completely take over the USB stick you install it on (you can't put backup images on it as well). For this reason, I'd just use a small capacity stick - 2GB is plenty. You can then either create your backup image on a second USB stick, an external drive, or network share. Thanks for your feedback.
*EDITED:*
This works, and I've been setting up thumb drives for the student workers to use to re-image hundreds of machines (No we cannot use SCCM, several of these are not connected to the network)
---------------------
1) Insert thumb drive into Windows PC
2) Run diskpart
2.a) List disk
2.b) Select disk # (where # is the thumb drive you want to prep)
2.c) List disk (again and make sure the disk you want is preceded with an asterix)
2.d) Clean (this will wipe the disk of all data and partitions, so make sure you selected the correct drive)
2.e) Exit (to get out of diskpart)
3) In Windows, launch Disk Manager (this is easier than all the commands in diskpart)
3.a) Right-click on the drive you're wanting to use, and select Simple Volume
3.a.1) Fat32
3.a.2) 32K cluster size (I don't know exactly why this is important, but if anything else, my drives would not boot)
3.a.3) Set the size to 4096 (4Gb)
3.a.4) Name RescueZilla (same as if using Etcher / Rufus to write the ISO)
3.b) Right-click the empty space of the drive, and select Simple Volume again
3.b.1) NTFS (I'm using NTFS as I need this to be able to be read by and written to with Microsoft OS (Windows 10, Server 2019/2022, etc...)
Why? Because as images are created for the various manufacturer and models of equipment, they will be store on the network, and copied to the RescueZilla drives as needed.
3.b.2) If using NTFS, default cluster size is fine
3.b.3) I use all the remaining space on the device
3.b.4) Name Images (this is what the partition is for, so why not call it by the intended purpose)
4) Windows can mount an ISO and it will appear as its own drive letter
4.a) Copy the ISO contents to the RescueZilla partition of your thumb drive
4.b) Make sure you can see all the files so you do not miss any system or hidden files
Now the drive is ready to boot with, and you can mount the Images partition to save your back up to or restore from as this is not the boot partition that RescueZilla will not let you write to from within the application.
=====================
Originally posted, but this does not work consistently...
_____________________
Create two RescueZilla boot drives: 1) can be small and really only for booting RZ, 2) a large USB with RZ installed.
Now, boot with the first smaller USB
Insert the second larger USB
Run GParted and shrink the volume on the second USB down to around 4Gb (4096)
Create a new partition in the space now freed up
Format it to your desired type, I use NTFS because I want to be able to read this with Windows
Now, when you boot with the large USB, the second partition will be available to write the image to / read from
Does Rescuezilla literally makes a image copy of empty partition space? For example, Partition "C" drive is a 256GB hard drive which only have windows 10 which takes about 10GB of space, will Rescuezilla literally make a disk image of 256GB or disk image of 10GB? Thanks.
Rescuezilla only copies the space with data on it, so if the drive has 30gb of data, it will be a 30gb image. Hope that helps :)
Hello
My computer is 32bit
Can work with that rescuezilla
Because rescuezilla need 64 bit
I don't understand why we need to download a "flash" program to "copy" Rescuezilla to the usb drive.
Is it doing more than just copy the downloaded file? Can't one just do a file copy to the usb drive, or save the download to the usb drive directly?
Is the flash program turning the usb drive into a bootable drive? If that's the purpose it should have been stated explicitly so as to not confuse novices like me.
A computer cannot typically boot from an ISO file. Virtual machines can, but not physical desktop / laptops.
Etcher / Rufus / etc are programs that read in the ISO and copy the content to the USB. There are certain files that are copied which make the USB a bootable device the computer will recognize when the BIOS scans attached drives looking for boot devices.
Granted, he did not go into detail on this; it was just heavily implied.
Right now I'm waiting for a 1TB image to complete which the system reports to be 21 hours. :(
16:20 Thanks for this awesome video. I want to use this to restore one Pop!_OS image to 15 PCs with the same hardware as the first. However, if we don't have a NAS device or server, is it possible to just put the folder with the image on a Windows public folder on the same WiFi network and then point to it on this step?
If that is possible, how do I get the exact IP address for that shared folder for this step? //192.168.0.???
You're welcome. Yes, that should be possible. To find the IP address of your Windows computer, open the Command Prompt and type "ipconfig" (without the quotes) and press Enter. You should see the IP address listed next to the network adapter. If possible, it would be better to connect a network cable between your router and computer as imaging could take a long time over WiFi. Hope that helps :)
@@bytemypi2918 Thanks.
@@yak28 No problem :)
Does this work for The rpi
just searched here in my manjaro arm and its not avaiable, maybe for raspbian. deja dup is working fine here for as i know
@@RafaCoringaProducoes ok
You can't boot the Pi from Rescuezilla directly, but if you connect the Pi's microSD card to your desktop PC/laptop and boot into Rescuezilla that way, you can then choose the microSD card as the 'Source drive' and create an image from it.
Then, when you want to restore, do the same again, but this time select the microSD card as the destination drive. Just be careful that you don't select your computer's internal drive at any point, as you don't want to accidentally overwrite that! Hope that helps :)
@@bytemypi2918 Ok
DOOD!
Wrote a comment and it looks like it got deleted because I wrote an IP address as an example. Well, your loss youtube.
Short version: For me, forward slashes "/" didn't work when I tried to save my image to a shared networkfolder on my Desktop PC. I had to use backslashes "\".
This is factory reset not an image backup