virtualbox.org

First, let me say Thank You TerryE, for your wonderful turorial All About VDI's.
I have yet to read it all but it will be very handy since I want to get the most from using VirtualBox by keeping it in good order and properly backed up.

Currently, I have Xxclone to clone my XP Virtual Disk from within XP.
This perserves the data and MBR nicely in the Guest OS but does little to get me back in service quickly should I have a virtual problem.
Xxclone is wonderful if you can swap drives but is difficult, if not impossible to clone the backup into the Virtual Disk.

Ubuntu 8.04 is my host.
XP_SP3 is my guest.
Sun VirtualBox is my VM.
All works wonderfully together for me, just need to clone my laptop (Sony Vaio) internal HD so I can easily and quickly swap with the same HD mounted external (via USB)
I use the laptop for work so need the swap insurance available at all times.

I'm I'm not mistaken, CloneZilla may be my answer.
I know CZ will clone either Ubuntu or XP and individually help preserve my MBR's (separately).

Question:
1) Will CloneZilla work to clone Ubuntu with .VirtualBox including the Guest OS?
2) Can this be performed as a single action ... just clone the Host HD?

There is a matter of having separate Root and /home partitions but II think CloneZilla has an option to just clone the complete HD.
I don't think CZ will do Incremental Backups following the initial clone (like Xxclone),
but being able to clone the complete HD once per week or even month would be great.
I will still be using Xxclone to perserve any data that changes during that time.

Thank You for any information that might help me clone the complete system.

Dave

Hello Dave,

I have just been using CloneZilla for backing up an install of XP, I'm no expert but the manuals are fresh in my head

With Clonezilla you can make a copy or either a single partition or a complete disk either to another spare hard drive, or into a compressed file on an external drive

If I understand your correclty it should do what you want. When you clone the harddrive it copies everything, including any virtual machine files that are present on that drive.

As far as I know you cannot use Clonezilla to restore a single file on it's own, you have to write over the entire drive or partition, so any chages made since the clone was made will be lost, both on your host and virtual machine.

Another option you may want to look at is to either make a copy of your virtual machine drive using the tools provided by Virtualbox (check the manual) or taking a snapshot that you can roll-back to at any time. That way if you have a problem with the virtual machine you can just go back to the earlier version of it.

As far as your host system is concerned the guest settings and hd are just files, so they do not need to be cloned like a real hd.

Hope that helps!
Kristian

Hi Kristian,

The CloneZilla Clone of my complete HD, includiing VB is exactly what I need.
I just want to be able to completely clone my laptop HD every month or so.
This way I have a bootable, swapable HD for the unexpected.

I will use a different routine or program for Daily or weekly data backups.
I think that I can easily establish an area of my /home that gets backed up or even sync'd daily using Grsync.

For XP daily backup I can easily use Xxclone from within VB since it has incremental backup and is fast and very easy. (Fresh backed up data is available at all times)

It's all coming together now,
1) Monthly Clone - Complete, swapable HD (everything)
2) Daily or weekly Grsync for Ubuntu Data (paperwork, contracts etc)
3) Daily incremental backup for XP data (important CAD data)

This I can live with, easily.

I too think that I should be able to do the complete clone and have a bootable, swapable HD as long as my cloned external HD is the same as my internal HD. (I want it the same, MBR, partitions, VB, Swaps ... all the same setup)

This is more of a confidence thing than anything else for me.
I figured this might work, just hoping for some confirmation and I think you've helped me there. Another perspective is often helpful, especially when you are as new to all of this as I am.
I'll post a follow-up later to confirm that this works as planned.

I really appreciate your input.

Thank You,

Dave