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I made an image of my whole drive last night now I need to restore it back. However Clonezilla complaint that the drive is too small by a crazy tiny margin:
Destination disk is too small!
Destination disk size: 976773165 sectors (500.1 GB)
Source disk size from the image: 976773168 sectors (500.1 GB)
I do not get it. This is the exact same drive. Clonezilla also verified that this backup was restorable when I imaged it.
Any recommendations or insights on how to force Clonezilla to make this restoration back?
I have been cloning with Clonezilla for couple years for backup. Now when I need it to use it the first time to restore back, it does not work.
yarun can
Posted 2013-11-06T19:35:03.130
Reputation: 800
Maybe you need to do a low-level format of the drive with some LiveCD utility? I've never heard of such a cloning issue before though. Can't wait to see the other responses – MonkeyZeus – 2013-11-06T19:40:17.950
First you must understand size different is greater then 3 bytes. A sector isn't 1-byte. I would verify you only have a single partition. Of course its entirely possible the number of valid sectors has changed by three, if thats the case, your target hdd is no longer big enough for the target data. – Ramhound – 2013-11-06T19:41:09.060
@Ramhound, I made the image last night. The image had multiple partitions, and I imaged the whole drive. How can valid sectors can change if all I did was to try to restore it? I edited the title based on your information – yarun can – 2013-11-06T19:45:28.837
@MonkeyZeus, what is a good method to do low level format? – yarun can – 2013-11-06T19:46:07.137
@yaruncan - The firmware on a hdd continiously go through and mark bad sectors. Use your favorite S.M.A.R.T tool to determine if the number of bad sectors is high. – Ramhound – 2013-11-06T19:48:15.020
@Ramhound, ok that is fine but what are my options then? – yarun can – 2013-11-06T19:53:38.377
Considering the comments above, there might be very little you can do if the firmware has marked the sectors as being bad. The obvious solution is to get a larger hard drive or a different 500GB drive with enough sectors for the restoration. Do you have a big enough external drive that you can restore it to, delete some stuff, re-create image, and restore to original 500GB drive? – MonkeyZeus – 2013-11-06T19:56:47.737
@MonkeyZeus, the original drive has a lot of space actually. It was 500gb drive but only 80 Gb was used I think. I do not know why the drive size is important at this point if I have so much empty space. i can see that where the partitions are is important but could not CZ adjust that accordingly? – yarun can – 2013-11-06T19:59:26.910
@MonkeyZeus,btw we do not know if the issue is a result of bad sectors at this point. It could be CZ thing too. I am investigating. – yarun can – 2013-11-06T20:29:04.773
@yaruncan I see, does CloneZilla have the option for fixed/automatic proportioning? I was able to do such things with Acronis in the past. – MonkeyZeus – 2013-11-06T20:36:19.420
The funny thing is that I just look at the disk with fdisk and fdisk is reporting it as "255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors " Same as the image sectors. So CZ is totally confused about the number of sectors on the disk and the number of sectors in the image. At this point I am suspecting that either CZ is confused or there is faulty hardware like bad usb cables or usb adapter. I will try getting new ones and try those. – yarun can – 2013-11-06T20:38:44.700