Dualboot on Lenovo B570 - 2: Backup

Before manipulating disk partitions a backup is always recommended. On my Lenovo laptop there are in general three options to make a backup:

1. the Windows 7 backup functionality
2. the Lenovo Onekey Rescue-System
3. Clonezilla-LiveCD on the USB-Stick prepared previously (the first posting)

To be honest: I hate proprietary software. You never know what the software is doing and which strange file formats they are using. When it comes down to harddisk/partition backups nothing compares to a simple sector-by-sector image of the content.  With a tool like Clonezilla you'll get exactly that: a plain copy of the content, which can be easily restored or cloned to another harddisk or even loop mounted to extract just portions of it (if you know how to, of course).


It's a shame that Clonezilla still comes without a modern GUI, but well, it's the best option to make a backup, so who cares?

Before booting from the USB stick containing the Clonezilla-LiveCD enter the BIOS (press F2 while booting) and modify the boot sequence (first device should be the USB stick). And while in the BIOS enable the Virtualization Support, too, if you want to use VirtualBox or KVM later. I really don't understand why this feature is disabled by default on almost every laptop.

After booting fron the USB stick the Clonezilla boot option can be found in the utils section of the XBoot boot menu (if you haven't forget to download it and install it with XBoot, of course).

Since there is not much data on the disk (just the configurated windows including a few tools) I've chosen a full harddisk backup including the verify after backup option and let it backup the harddisk content to an external USB harddisk. I don't know if Clonezilla supports eSATA yet, but it will be the better option due to the faster disk access.

After half an hour the backup is done. Enjoy a few chapters of a good book inbetween.