Want to try Mint but...

Quick to answer questions about finding your way around Linux Mint as a new user.
Forum rules
There are no such things as "stupid" questions. However if you think your question is a bit stupid, then this is the right place for you to post it. Stick to easy to-the-point questions that you feel people can answer fast. For long and complicated questions use the other forums in the support section.
Before you post read how to get help. Topics in this forum are automatically closed 6 months after creation.
Kestrel1

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by Kestrel1 »

You shouldn't have a problem, but I would suggest running Mint as a virtual machine first. To do this get Virtual Box here:
http://www.virtualbox.org/
Install this on Windows & you can just use the ISO from mint to run the live CD or to install it on to a virtual drive. No need to burn the CD.
You can then decide if it is for you before installing on your HDD for real.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
crispata

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by crispata »

Hi!

Just FYI I'm nowhere near as experienced as some of the folk here undoubtedly are. My first (failed) attempt to get into Linux was in 1999. Since then I've given it another shot whenever the bug hit me, and have been nearly 100% Linux since about April 2007. I'd struggle to name every distro that has had a spin on my hard drive, but between April 2007 and now, I've spent significant time in Ubuntu, PCLOS, and openSUSE, only coming around to Mint this past week.

So, as a somewhat recent convert, here are my questions, thoughts, and suggestions for you. :)

First, Linux Mint is the easiest to get going with of anything I've tried, hands down. (FWIW, my only experience is with Linux Mint 5 64-bit)

I know the Mint folks probably like to focus on more distinctions than this, but right off the bat you have the benefit of out-of-the-box media support (mp3 and commercial dvd playback, common codecs, etc...) which is unique in my experience so far. Were you using Ubuntu, getting this capability added after install is pretty easy, but I know every additional step feels a bit daunting when you are fully new to Linux, so it's nice not to have to worry about that.

Anyway, if my mom (who isn't a geek at all) asked me tomorrow to recommend a distro, I'd probably recommend Mint, so I think you've picked a good place to start.

What you describe regarding having Vista and Mint together on your hard drive is "dual booting". The first thing you should do unless you don't mind the possibility of rebuilding your Vista install is use Ghost or similar method to image your hard drive if at all possible. This isn't because there's anything particularly risky about installing Mint/Linux -- it's just because small mistakes can have big consequences when repartitioning/adding a second operating system.

If you are reasonably experienced, my suggestion is to get your hands on the gparted livecd, and use it to shrink your Vista partition, creating free space "after" it. (Making free space to the right of the vista partition in the gparted gui). Then boot off of the Mint install disk and tell it to use available free space. (I'm not intimately familiar with the guided partitioner, but I'm pretty sure there is a "use available space" option. This is what I did 10 minutes after unwrapping my new laptop in August (I was putting Ubuntu 8.04 on it, though), and I had no problems booting into Vista afterwards. Gparted livecd iso here: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php

If you aren't reasonably experienced messing about with partitions and such, then the advice I've just given you is woefully lacking on details. :)

Here's a howto regarding dual booting XP with Linux Mint. http://drsjlazar.blogspot.com/2007/02/b ... linux.html

I know of no reason why Vista would present any different problems, but you may want to wait for someone who has done it with Vista more than the one time I have to weigh in.

Here's a recent thread from the Mint forums about dual booting with Vista, but I think it won't help you much if you've not done something like this before. http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopi ... 46&t=17868

And a general piece of advice:

Expect even simple things to be difficult for awhile. There are many, many things in Linux that work differently than in Windows such that (moreso if you consider yourself a power user in Windows) they will seem foreign and difficult at first. If you hang in there (and assuming you can get some good help here) you'll reach a point where most of the major things kind of click and become second nature. I won't make any predictions on when all the little nuances will click -- I'll let you know when I get there. :)

My suggestion (based on what I did starting in 2007) is to take it one step at a time. What do I need to do to get my wireless set up? (Could be nothing, could take some doing, but it's the only "basic" functionality that might cause you some hassle.) Once you get that straightened out, just use it for websurfing for awhile. Play with OpenOffice a bit.

Then pick something you want to do and do some googling about how to do it -- look for Mint or Ubuntu specific advice and software recommendations. Just pick one simple thing at first, like tagging some MP3 files or setting up a bittorrent client, since do do it you'll probably have to learn about package management and repositories. (Not a difficult topic, but a fundamental one that you'll need familiarity with for lots of other things.)

Then just gradually notice what things you are only comfortable doing in Windows and learn at your own pace about how to get the same things done in Linux, one item at a time.

You'll probably break some things along the way. Learning to do new things, plus breaking things, plus fixing things will start to add up, and before you know it you'll have a pretty comfortable working knowledge for most typical tasks.

When you get to the point where only a couple of things are holding you back, you may have some options (like Wine or using a Windows VM) that will help you to break from Windows however thoroughly you want, but there's no rush to get to that point -- or even to ever get to that point if it's not a goal for you.

Anyway, I'm just rambling now. Good luck in your endeavors, and I hope the dual boot works out for you with no drama. :)

-- Joe
Last edited by crispata on Mon Dec 08, 2008 8:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Fred

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by Fred »

Rapc wrote:
Want to try Mint but...
I wanted to respond more to the bigger issue articulated in your thread subject. Linux is not Windows, and doesn't work like Windows. They are both operating systems but get things done in different ways with different tools.

I can say with few reservations that the more you know about Windows the harder the transition will be for you. The hardest part of using Linux is unlearning Windows. It seems like the people that have the easiest time with Linux are the very young and seniors that have little if any experience with Windows. I volunteer in our local school system and I have seen this phenomenon played out time and again. It is the so called computer literate 30ish - 40ish teachers that have the most problems, by several orders of magnitude.

You should not approach Linux as a drop-in replacement for Windows. If you do you will be frustrated and disappointed, as your expectations will not be fulfilled. You should approach Linux as a learning experience, like you would learning to play the piano, learning to surf, learning algebra, learning to read and write, learning Windows, or a second, or third, language. You didn't intuitively know how to use Windows the first time you turned on or saw a computer with that operating system on it and the same will be true of Linux.

Having said that, Mint is one of the very best distros to introduce you to Linux. The developers made considerable efforts to make the transition as easy as possible, but there is only so much you can do to make a Mercedes Benz resemble a Ford Pinto without actually making a Pinto out of it. :-)

If you are willing to take the time and effort to learn something new, and in my opinion better, your efforts will be rewarded in ways you are not currently even aware of. There are many people in this and other forums ready, willing, and able to help you in any way they can. In my and many others opinion it is a worthwhile journey.

I say this in all honesty and without malice of any kind. If you do not wish to invest the time and effort to learn a new, better system. Don't put yourself through the frustration. Stay with Windows. Regardless of what you may have heard it will not be a drop-in replacement for Windows. When the pain of using Windows reaches the level that you are willing to invest in a learning experience, come back. There will be many here waiting to help you. :-)

Fred
badmotor

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by badmotor »

Not to put you off, but you might want to try Googling "dual boot linux and Vista", as this is a little trickier than dual booting with XP. It can be done though - I did it last weekend :D
Fred

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by Fred »

Rapc

Do you have another drive, internal or external, that is at least as big as the one that you have your windows system installed on? If you do I have a tip for you.

Backup your system before you start playing. To do this the easy way you can clone your system drive to your backup drive with a simple command. Be advised, you will destroy everything on the backup drive, so make sure there is nothing on it you want to keep. When you are finished it will have exactly the same thing on it that your system drive has, warts, viruses, fragmentation and all. :-)

Instructions:

Download and burn the desired Mint live cd/dvd iso image. Burn it s-l-o-w, 8X or less, in a RAW mode. RAW mode is usually listed as DAO, SAO, TAO. Be sure you burn it as an iso image and not a data cd/dvd. Check the md5 sum of the finished cd/dvd against the one published on the Mint download page for that version.

Connect the external drive if that is what you will be using to backup to.

Boot the live cd/dvd. If it boots directly into Windows instead of the cd you will need to go into the BIOs setup and set the boot order to try the CD/DVD first. Save and close and try booting again.

Select the default boot and if all is well you will wind up with a desktop that looks somewhat familiar. It will run kinda slow because it is running from the cd/dvd, but don't worry, it will be much more responsive from the hard drive. Poke around to your hearts content. :-)

Then open a program called Gparted. You will find it in the Menu. This is a partitioning program. You will windup getting more familiar with it than you really wanted to before it is over with. :-) For now, all you are interested in is finding out what the drive designators for the drives are. You drives should be listed. They will probably be called sda and sdb. sda will probably be your Windows system drive and sdb will probably be your soon-to-be backup drive. Confirm that that is true. If it isn't make a note of the correct drive designators and what they are, system drive or backup drive.

For the sake of this example I am going to assume that your system drive is sda and your backup drive is sdb. If this is not true be absolutely sure you correct it in the command below.

The command we will use to clone your drive is the dd command. It is a very powerful command which by extension means it can do much harm as well as good. Be very careful to get it entered correctly. No typos or mistakes are allowed. You have been forewarned. :-)

Open a terminal. If you have poked around the live cd you will have already seen it in the menu. In the terminal type:

sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

Remember sda is your system drive and sdb is your backup in this example. The system drive comes first and backup drive comes second.

After you start this command, by pressing enter, you can take a coffee break. Depending upon the size of the drive and your computer's speed this could take a while so don't panic. When it is finished the flashing command line prompt will return.

When it is finished, shut your computer down and remove the backup drive and put it in a safe place. This is your insurance policy if the unlikely, but possible occurs and you completely trash your main drive.

If the time comes when you want to reconstitute your system drive from your backup, do everything as above except when it comes time to type in the command reverse the drive designators, as shown below.

sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sda

If your backup drive is larger than your system drive the command may abort in an error at the end of the process. Don't worry about it. It is because it can't copy anymore of the backup drive to your system drive. Which of course should be true, the backup drive being larger than the system drive.

Good luck, :-)

Fred
Last edited by Fred on Tue Dec 09, 2008 11:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
badmotor

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by badmotor »

Rapc wrote:lol thanks for the replies guys. Fred I know exactly where your coming from, this is why i want a dual boot in case i get so frustrated with it i just want the easy option now n then. But I am very keen to learn a new system, all i hear are the advantages of using linux, I also think it looks better(my personal opinion of course) and also I just want to give it a shot, i know its not easy, but like anything new u have to learn, you'll get into it once u do it enough.

Also badmotor i have googled it lol, i just really want to know it inside out before doing it, b4 i mess up my hard drive or something :?

I came accross this: http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=604&tag=rbxccnbzd1 is that a good way of going about it?
That's a good start, but he is missing an important fundamental - Vista won't boot of Grub (it's very stubborn). Here's my solution:



oh dear... what to do?

Fear not, there is a great program called EasyBCD 1.7.2 that you can download for Vista here: http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1
After that, follow the guide which explains how to modify the Vista boot loader here: http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Linux
- and you are good to go! Smiley
Fred

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by Fred »

badmotor wrote:
That's a good start, but he is missing an important fundamental - Vista won't boot of Grub (it's very stubborn). Here's my solution:
That isn't quite true my friend. It can be problematic for the installer at times depending on the way the service partitions are placed on the drive by the manufacturer, but you can boot Vista just fine with grub. :-)

Fred
Last edited by Fred on Tue Dec 09, 2008 12:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
bobpur
Level 3
Level 3
Posts: 125
Joined: Mon Dec 25, 2006 5:46 pm

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by bobpur »

You didn't say what you wanted to dualboot Mint and Windows Vista on.

If it's a laptop, my advice won't help you any. If you want to dualboot on a desktop then we are in business.

1). Add a second hard drive to your machine.It doesn't have to be a new one. It'll help if it is a different size or manufacture than the original hard drive so you can keep better track of what you are doing. This has the added benefit of not having you messing around on your Vista drive.The only thing that should be on your Vista drive would be GRUB.

2). Install Mint (or any distro or another version of Windows) on this drive. Even if your foray into linux fails, you'll still have additional storage available from the added drive.

This is an oversimplification of the whole process, but there are posts available that, further, explain the procedure.

I have never dualbooted Vista with anything as it usually gets overwritten with WinXP before it fully warms up.

I have never done the virtual install thing either. I plop in the live cd, if I like what I see then I install it. Remember, the live cd is not as fast or as functional as a full install.

Don't let the procedure intimidate you. The cd does everything. You just have to tell it where you want to install and, after a few easy questions and a wait of indeterminate length, you're up and running.

One other thing that I, probably, should have put in here about a half a dozen times is: BACK UP EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO KEEP!!!. No matter which method you want to use do this one thing. Think about it. Would you want to turn to your significant other and say: "Honey, I lost our wedding pictures." :) :)

This is a little disjointed but the major points are there.

Good luck
viking777

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by viking777 »

Just reading through this thread and thought I would add my two cents worth - feel free to ignore :D

1) My laptop came with Vista and I did exactly as the others have suggested. First shrink the partition (the mint installer is probably capable of doing this but I am not sure so I use gparted as suggested by others) then just drop in the install disk and let it use the remaining free space. It will pick up the windows install and add it to the grub menu.lst. I have never heard of this claim that grub can't boot vista before, mine does perfectly well (not that it gets the chance that often!)

2) Disk cloning in Linux is woefully lacking. If you are used to using windows tools for cloning you will be appalled at how awful the linux alternatives are. I am not saying that they don't work, because they work perfectly well, it is just that each of them seems to have had its user interface designed by a chimpanzee on acid. Fred's suggestion to use dd is certainly the easiest but it is hopelessly inefficient. The best of a very bad bunch is Clonezilla http://clonezilla.org/ which you have to download, burn to cd, boot from the cd and then try and work out how the hell to use it. If clonezilla is too easy for you then try 'partimage'. I won't bother giving you the url for that as I don't dislike you that much :lol:

Good luck anyway.
Fred

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by Fred »

viking777 wrote:
it is just that each of them seems to have had its user interface designed by a chimpanzee on acid. Fred's suggestion to use dd is certainly the easiest but it is hopelessly inefficient.
Thank you viking777, I just had to laugh at your characterization of the GUIs used for backup routines. It is so true. I will have to try to remember that one. :-) Of course there is a reason for that. There never really has been a demand for a GUIed backup routine for one, the other is that designing one that would be appropriate for even half the Linux installs would be quite difficult, at best. Linux, unlike Windows, can be partitioned and configured so many different ways that it doesn't lend itself to a simple, one size fits all GUI scheme.

I am curious how you define "inefficient" in the other part of your quote though. There are basically two types of backup methods. One is the bit-for-bit method, which is what the dd command does. It can make a true clone of the source drive, including the mbr/mpr and all the partitioning and file structures. It doesn't have to store data to a file that then has to be manipulated and interpreted to be restored. In fact the backup drive can be swapped for the source drive in the machine if need be because of a drive failure. There is no so-called restore needed if you choose to deal with it that way. Granted, I don't know much about what Windows programs are available to give you a true bit-for-bit disk clone but I would be extremely surprised if one existed that was any faster than the dd command on the same equipment.

The other method of backing up is to transfer just the data and leave the file structure behind. After all it is relatively easy to reconstitute a virgin file system. This allows you to compress the data so it takes up a lot less space. In the case or the rsync command, on subsequent backups after the original, as you would have let's say for weeklies, only the new or changed files are transfered so the backup is lightning fast. I backup about 70 Gig. from multiple partitions with rsync on a weekly basis. It takes me less than 2 min. from start to finish. Actually this says more about how much new data I add a week than anything else because it is only transferring the new data that I have added that week and removing any data from the backup that I have deleted.

The only thing I really know about most GUI backup solutions is that they are less than reliable. And when they do fail it always seems to be when you really need them to restore. I guess I am just old and set in my ways but I just don't trust them with something that important. :-)

Fred
viking777

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by viking777 »

Hi Fred,

I was simply alluding to the fact that dd does a sector by sector copy of all disk space - including free space- this means that it takes much longer and results in a much larger file size. I believe there is a way to 'zero out' unoccupied space before it is copied but I am not familiar with that so cannot comment.

Clonezilla on the other hand only copies used space which results in a much smaller file size and as a result produces an image much more quickly.

As for it being difficult or impossible to produce a decent gui for linux disk cloning tools, I simply don't believe that. If as much time and energy had been put into that task as has been put into compiz for example then we would have tools to match the likes of Drive Image (which I used to use on windows and linux but recently it no longer works on Linux - unless you fork out a fortune for their linux server version). Linux would then be very much the better for it.

Anybody who thinks that wobbly windows is more important than disk imaging does not have much of a grasp of computing (or life probably!).
Fred

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by Fred »

viking777,

I didn't say it was impossible to write a GUI for a Linux backup program. What I said was it would be difficult, at best. There are so many backup scenarios that it would have to be long and complicated to offer even a reasonable selection and configurations for each. No program can read your mind. Not many find it worthwhile to bother investing the resources to even try when there are excellent CLI tools available that are more flexible and powerful than a GUI could ever be.

Yes, you can copy only the files that are in the index, but then it wouldn't be a true clone of the drive you are copying from. It wouldn't be bit-for-bit, which was what I was trying to accomplish for the thread starter. If you want that kind of backup you would probably want to use rsync. There are others too but to keep from complicating it, these two are good examples of the two basic types of backups. You could mix and match tools to get all kinds of hybrids of these two types, but that would get a bit more complicated, but certainly doable.

You don't need a GUI to accomplish everything you want to do. Don't be afraid to learn to use some simple CLI tools. It is a very strong feature of Linux, it isn't its downfall. Don't cut yourself off from these powerful tools just because you have never learned to use them. As you can see from the simple command above, you don't have to purchase or download a big program to accomplish something useful. :-)

Fred
viking777

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by viking777 »

Fred,

I feel we are getting dangerously close to hijacking this thread so I apologise to the thread starter, but I don't agree with a lot of what you have said so I would like to reply.

You rightly surmise that I am not keen on command line tools, but that doesn't mean that I don't know how to use them. I use them virtually every day, not because I think they are easier or quicker, but because very often there is no satisfactory alternative. Have a look at some of my posts in which I have tried to help others, normally I will suggest a command line way of solving a problem because the command line is universal and graphical interfaces are not. So please don't think I am trying to steal away your favourite toys, I am not - hell I even use the command line to run Clonezilla because the tui is so dreadful.

Again I don't believe that it is difficult to design a proper interface for a disk cloning tool, to prove it to you I am going to do it now right in front of your eyes!

Q1) What do you want to image?

Q2) Where do you want to put it?

Q3) What do you want to call it?

Begin Clone

And that is difficult to code??

OK so I have never written a line of computer code in my life and I never will, but you can't tell me that that would present anybody with any problems.

Of course somewhere else on the interface you might like to include an 'Advanced' mode and in there you could put in as many options as you wished, but life doesn't have to be as complicated as some in the Linux community like to make it ( I am not pointing a finger at you, it is just a general observation). I think this fact is something the Mint developers have grasped more firmly than any other distro makers and that is why I am enjoying using it and that is why Mint is getting so many newcomers and admirers.
crispata

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by crispata »

^^ LOL. If you have access to it, I'd suggest you ghost it using ghost. :-)

Failing that, *at least* back up everything you care about on that drive (mp3 files, digital pictures, office documents, etc...) before attempting to dual boot. This is "good enough" if you are willing and able to reinstall vista in the event of a problem. If you are not willing and able to do that, it's not really "good enough" because although you'll have all your "stuff" even if something goes wrong, you won't be able to do much with it.

A few questions that I don't think you've answered -- my apologies if you have. This may impact some of the advice being given here, and can allow us to do a little bit of homework for you regarding finding the right method for proceeding --

[*] What is your general level of expertise? (For example, if you had a copy of ghost, would you know how to use it? Are you capable of reinstalling Vista if it would be required? If the machine in question is a desktop, do you have another drive you could add to the system and are you comfortable doing so? Etc...)

[*] Is this a laptop or a desktop?

[*] Have you ever fooled with Linux at all before? If you find yourself using clonezilla or partimage (and like Fred, I shudder at the thought) you'll need to understand what things like /dev/sda and /dev/sdb mean at least superficially....

And lastly, please don't be put off by all the various warnings in this thread + debate over cloning tools. The truth is that you can probably do exactly what I posted on P1 (and which was later echoed by viking77) and be fine. You'll probably spend more time deciding how to back up your existing install, doing the backup, and worrying about whether you can trust it than you will actually doing the install of Mint and validating that none of that mattered since everything went OK. However, it would be irresponsible of anyone to suggest that you give it a shot without taking some precautions to protect against whatever might go wrong (because of course it might) unless (at a minimum) you have backed up the stuff you care about, and your full Vista install is either imaged or you don't mind rebuilding it.

And, if it were me, I'd want an image of my system + an additional "normal" backup of individual files (mp3s etc) to cd or wherever if space allows. This gives you an additional safety net such that if your Vista install gets hosed *and* whatever clone you've made doesn't deploy properly, you still have your stuff, and have only to worry about getting Vista working again.

Also, if you do hose your vista install, post here if possible (dunno if you have other computers available) before trying to fix it. This isn't something I've got much experience in, but lots of people do, and in some cases getting it working again can be relatively simple.

I agree with Fred completely regarding the state of cloning tools in Linux. The only general usage case I've found in my travels where there doesn't seem to be any easy to use Linux tool (yet numerous easy to use Windows tools) is around disk/partition cloning. I think this is because the Linux beards are comfortable backing up their Linux systems using dd and/or tar/gzip from the command line. (Something I'm still not comfortable with.) So there hasn't been much call for a ghost counterpart in Linux. As a side note and general warning, my few attempts at cloning a *Linux* system with ghost have failed miserably and inexplicably -- but I've always found it to be 100% reliable for Windows systems.
crispata

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by crispata »

Hey, does anyone have experience with whatever system backup tools must exist natively in Windows? Might this be the solution to his cloning dilemma?

I had recommended a free cloning option here, but deleted it as PCMag specified that it was tricky to use for restoring, and it would not make an image straight to DVD. However, I did find other options.

http://www.macrium.com/ReflectFree.asp Macrium Reflect sounds like it does what you need. You'll have to investigate whether you think you are comfortable with using it. It seems aimed at being easy. Restoration requires you to boot from a rescue cd, but it sounds like it will create that disk for you. Just make sure you create it while everything is still up and running + print the documentation or otherwise ensure you can read it while the computer we are discussing is down.

Seagate DiscWizard is rumored to be a free rebranded version of Acronis TrueImage. I've used TrueImage once, and it's pretty easy. Again, however, make sure you have researched the steps required to restore your image afterwards and are sure you can execute them before proceeding with it. http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/suppor ... discwizard A quick read makes it sound like you need a Seagate drive for this to work. With luck you have one? :)

You should be able to run and play with either of these so you can get comfortable with them without any risk -- then take the plunge when you feel ready.
viking777

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by viking777 »

Well I have extensive experience with Acronis True Image and it used to work perfectly on Linux however it doesn't any more. Back in January this year somebody high up in the Linux kernel heirarchy dedided that they would change the space per inode on linux file systems to 256 bytes supposedly for compatability with ext4 (which has still not been adopted anywhere afaik). From that moment on True Image ceased working, or at least it ceased working properly. I even tried upgrading to their latest version (disk imaging is so important I don't mind spending money on it) however that failed to work as well. When I enquired about it at Acronis I was referred to their Linux server version (several hundred pounds) which is the only version they will offer support for Linux on.

In case you think I am making this up the details are here:

http://e2fsprogs.sourceforge.net/e2fspr ... tml#1.40.5

From that moment on I have been stuck with Clonezilla. It is awful to use, but it is reliable though nowhere near as flexible as Acronis used to be.
Fred

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by Fred »

viking777 was certainly correct in an earlier thread when he said we were getting dangerously close to hijacking this thread. :-) We should probably start another thread to discuss backup issues.

So this will be my last post in this thread not directed to helping with his specific issues.

I freely confess that I have little current knowledge about Windows backup solutions. What I do know is that I don't know exactly what they do and how they do it. And, the net is full of horror stories about restore failures.

Word definitions have been warped to the point I don't know what we are talking about. The word "clone" for example. A clone backup is an exact replica. It is different from an image file, which is not the same as a data backup file. The first step in backing up is deciding what you wish to accomplish and the second is deciding what kind of backup best fits your need. Only then can you pick the tools, be they GUI commercial programs, GUI open source programs, or CLI tools. At least that is the way I approach the problem. I refuse to be locked in to some proprietary GUI program just because someone says it works and it is available, when I have no earthly idea what it is doing or how well it does it. Backup is just too important for so much blind faith. lol

The instructions I gave in an earlier thread will produce a "clone" of the system drive, not an image file, compressed or otherwise, and not any form of a data file. I thought if he had another hard drive of equal or larger size, this would be the most fool proof way for him to proceed. He then has the option of restoring from this cloned drive or he can just swap the cloned drive for the system drive if that were to become necessary.

If someone thinks another type of backup would be better for him, by all means speak up. I certainly don't have all the best ideas cornered. Or, if there is a better tool to make this kind of backup, please enlighten me too. :-)

What I can tell the thread starter with a reasonable degree of certainty is if you judiciously follow the instructions I gave you, you will wind up with a clone of your system drive that you can restore your entire system from, (mbr/mpr, partitions, data and all). Or you can swap the backup drive for the main system drive, if it were to become necessary for some unknown reason.

There may be other, better ways of doing this. This is just the way I would do it. :-)

Fred
Fred

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by Fred »

Rapc,

Use your winMd5Sum routine on the finished, burned cd iso. The result you get should match what is posted on the download page for the version you downloaded and burned.

When burning an iso I strongly recommend you follow the burning instructions in my earlier post. Distros are highly compressed and require special burning techniques to have an error free burn. Contrary to popular belief you can still have a bad burn, even if your MD5 routine says it is good.

Fred
viking777

Disk cloning/imaging(so that rapc can have his thread back)

Post by viking777 »

Word definitions have been warped to the point I don't know what we are talking about. The word "clone" for example. A clone backup is an exact replica. It is different from an image file, which is not the same as a data backup file
Fred, I apologise unreservedly for my slack use of vocabulary. You are of course exactly correct and imaging and cloning are two distinctly different beasts and I have been talking about them as if they were the same. Wrong - slapped wrist!

Cloning tools are much easier to find than imaging tools and it is the latter that I have been looking for since the 'demise' of True Image on Linux. Clonezilla is the best I have been able to find though I live in hope that that situation will improve eventually.
Fred

Re: Want to try Mint but...

Post by Fred »

Rapc,

Looking at your screen shots, it appears that your software just won't calculate the md5 sum of the burned dvd. Unfortunately I am not familiar with the Windows software. Maybe someone else will give you a recommendation on the software to use to get the MD5 sum of the burned disk.

If not I would go ahead and try to use it as is. If it has problems you will know that re-burning the disk should be high on your list of possibles.

While you are burning, I would suggest you burn the latest stable version of Gparted live cd iso and a live cd iso called Supergrub. These are good tools to have around and may come in handy when doing installs. They can make life easier from time to time. :-)

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... _id=271779

http://download.linux-live-cd.org/Super ... sgd/cdrom/

Fred
Locked

Return to “Beginner Questions”