BakAndImgCD 14.0
A hat nicely complements a big bald head and so Shashank Sharma dons his sysadmin titfer as he takes BakAndImgCD for a spin.
This could be the ultimate backup, image and repair tool, but you’d better love the terminal, as it’s all you’ll have…
Creating backups, imaging disks and partitions is one of those admin tasks that even regular desktop users should get comfortable with. However, unlike regular backups of files and folders these system-level tasks require specialised tools and expertise which is why they are often ignored. The BakAndImgCD distribution (distro) is an officially supported fork of the minimalist 4MLinux distro which is designed to simplify the process of backing up, imaging and cloning files, partitions and disks.
The distro is available as a mere 28MB ISO image and provides no-frills access to popular open source cloning tools and scripts, such as Partclone, Partimage and ddrescue. Thanks to these tools the distro supports a wide array of file systems, including the ones commonly used on open source and proprietary desktops and servers, such as EXT3, EXT4, ReiserFS, Btrfs, HFS+, FAT and NTFS etc.
Thanks to its text-based interface, the distro is quick off the blocks. On booting, it asks you to select one of the three supported options. The first is a manual backup that scans the hard disk and enables you to quickly copy files to either removable USB disks, optical drives or remote FTP/SFTP server. After gathering information about the files to copy and their destination, the distro fires up the feature-rich Midnight Commander for the backup process.
Second is the automatic backup. Unlike the previous option, this one doesn’t backup individual files but copies entire partitions. It starts off by displaying the partition table and asks you to identify the partition you wish to copy. We’d have liked to see the option to backup multiple partitions in one go. Once you’ve selected a partition, you’re asked to select the archive type to create and lists the benefits of each.
The distro can squeeze the contents of the partition inside a TAR.GZ, which is the fastest, or, the slower but efficient, TAR.BZ2, or TAR.XZ, which takes the longest to create.
Fast, but boring
As mentioned already, BakAndImgCD doesn’t sport a fancy progress dialog box and gives no time estimation. When it’s done, you get the option to send it to a remote FTP server. This again establishes the connection to the remote computer and hands over control to the Midnight Commander for the transfer.
The third and final task you can accomplish with this distro is the creation of disk images. The process begins by selecting one of the three supported cloning tools: partimage, partclone, and ddrescue. There’s also a fourth option designed for new users that’s appropriately labelled ‘I have no idea!’ Using this option selects the partclone tool. Partclone can only clone partitions/disks to a destination that’s equal to or greater than the source, otherwise the distro terminates the process and asks you to refer to the tool’s log file for troubleshooting.
Blame it on familiarity or plain ol’ bias, but we don’t think BakAndImgCD offers enough to lure us away from Clonezilla. One option we sorely missed is the ability to directly clone partitions over the network to a remote location, eg when working with images, in addition to local disk and USB, Clonezilla allows you to mount a remote location (via Samba, NFS, WebDAV) into the local filesystem and can directly save an image inside it. Similarly, when cloning entire disks, Clonezilla clones the entire disk or selected partitions over the network. In contrast BakAndImgCD only moves an image to a remote location once it’s saved a copy on a locally available disk or media.