I to not recall ntfsclone needing a blank partition to successfully restore to. I recall in the past restoring the partition from backup right over the ntfs data.

Now to successfully restore the image I must first use dd to zero out the partition, as follows:



So what is the story? For a while was I just getting away with "beginners luck" or something?

Hi,


I do not know of any update to ntfsclone since version 2.0.0 and requiring some sweeping would not make much sense.
What kind of error do you get ?

Maybe something to do with the device not being a beginner any more. I suppose ntfsclone does not reallocate bad sectors.

Regards

Jean-Pierre

I apologize for not replying sooner... this BB system never notifies me of a reply. Next to look for a way to auto-check the "Notify me when a reply is posted" check box.

Anyway, it was as if the restore of the image had no affect what so ever. I was trying to roll back the image to a version which was not joined to the Samba PDC. Not until I added the wipe of the partition was the image successfully restored. Rebooting after imaging still had Windows joined to the PDC.

I added the wipe, then the image successfully restored and showed a state of prior to joining the PDC.

I do not remember needing to wipe the partition to get an accurate restore of the image in older versions of Ubuntu. I think perhaps I started working with ntfsclone as early as Ubuntu 7.04, definitely by 8.04.

Bump... any further feedback on this question?

I checked the man page for ntfsclone and sure enough I am using pretty much the exact suggested syntax. There is no mention in the man page for having to erase the partition prior to restoring the image.

Bump...

Is it expected to have to blank out a partition to get a successful restore of an image?

If not, then please provide steps to troubleshoot what was going wrong.

Like I said, I was restoring older and older snapshots of a Windows XP partition looking for the first image which had NOT been joined to our Samba PDC. The Windows XP images were restoring still joined to the domain. Finally I added the wipe of the partition, THEN the partition restore seemed to be genuine as the Windows Welcome screen came back, the pre joining a PDC state.

To me, that was scary... bewildering to think of how many times I have thought I restored an image successfully, now thinking "maybe not!"

Could I get some feedback on this, please?

Hi,


No, AFAIK, but I have not made any specific tests.

I wish I could.

This looks like some information outside the restored partition was still in use. It could be on another partition, directly or indirectly (through object_ids, Windows is able to find a copy of a deleted file still present on another partition or over the network, and this is likely to be used within a Samba context to get your account parameters).

Did you try restoring with a single partition available and no network connection ?

Well, ntfsclone was developed within another project and it does not use ntfs-3g...

Regards

Jean-Pierre

That is how I do my imaging all of the time. I image to the /home partition of my dual-boot of Ubuntu Linux.


I apologize. News to me... there were is the support for ntfsclone located and I will ask there.

Thanks!

Hi,


Sorry, I meant "Did you try booting on Windows with...", on the first boot on Windows after restoring.

Regards

Jean-Pierre

??? On the Linux side I had several snapshots taken at various point. I kept selecting "one older", would restore that image, reboot to Windows, searching for the non-PDC login "Welcome" screen verse the "C-A-D" screen. I was not seeing it ever.

Then I tried wiping the partition, after that I could see the "Welcome" screen I had been looking for.

So obviously to me wiping the partition did the trick to be able to restore the image properly.

Again I ask...

Sincerely,
Michael Lueck