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And, how many attempts did you have to make before you got it right? I'm about to do a 80gb to 80gb clone for archival purposes and want to make the best move here.

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PartedMagic, of course. It works equally well with any Windows partitions.

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I see that clonezilla and partclone are applications in this distro. Which do you use? partedmagic.com/programs.html – Flotsam N. Jetsam Dec 8 '10 at 16:52
Well, if you only want to copy a partition to another (maybe external) drive, you can simply use GParted. That's easy and reliable. – whitequark Dec 8 '10 at 18:37
I did the flash drive version, used G4L's click-to-clone and it worked the first time with no problems at all. Thanks! – Flotsam N. Jetsam Dec 8 '10 at 19:03
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What open-source drive clone software out there have you successfully used on win2k3 server?

I have conducted large-scale network-based cloning tasks with CloneZilla.

And, how many attempts did you have to make before you got it right? I'm about to do a 80gb to 80gb clone for archival purposes and want to make the best move here.

I would like to approach your "80GB-to-80GB" enquiry from a few perspectives:

1. Archiving

Typically, the cloned images will be stuffed into a USB-pluggable hard disk for instant access and portability (it also supports multiple storage destinations but I will explain that in Replication). You can choose to archive a single NTFS partition, or the entire disk itself. It provides verbose options on data compression for the cloned image, allowing you to decide between space-saving and performance requirements that you may be considering on. It also supports a whole lot of other filesystems that you will never be remotely interested in.

2. Replication

It offers you options to replicate the cloned image from various sources - SSHFS, NFS, SAMBA, FTP etc. You have a idling *nix system? Or extra space on your XP desktop? The options that are available will allow you to convert those machines as a central repository for you to retrieve the clone images from. It will allow you to conduct replication tasks to a dozen or more computers with ease. Of course, you can always work from a single USB-pluggable hard disk.

3. Difficulty

The understanding of difficulty in the usage of a certain application/software/solution is rather subjective. A little bit of reading and you will be all set to walk on your own. :-)

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Amazing. Right after I posted this question, I found clonezilla and began cloning. Everything was working swimmingly, or so I thought. When I booted the server on the clone and logged in, it immediately logged me right back out. What's up with that? – Flotsam N. Jetsam Dec 7 '10 at 14:06
Have you tried accessing the server via safe mode? – Michael Feng Dec 7 '10 at 14:46
Even more amazing is that now I've got beep codes 1-3-2 and led's codes showing "system board failure." This is a Dell PE 850 I got off ebay. Blast! What exactly would getting into safe mode do for me if I could get there? – Flotsam N. Jetsam Dec 7 '10 at 16:04
Did you see camilohe's answer? that trap 3 describes what was happening exactly. That article was about VM's though and I'm not sure if the "disk signature" is a factor or not. You said you've done w2k3 server though, right? – Flotsam N. Jetsam Dec 7 '10 at 16:08
boot failure resolved (bad ram stick). what about safe mode and trap 3 disk signature? (above) – Flotsam N. Jetsam Dec 7 '10 at 18:34
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Ive had pretty good luck with DriveImage XML

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too bad it's not open source – Flotsam N. Jetsam Dec 6 '10 at 17:54
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You could try selfimage, odin, diskimage or clonedisk (not oss just freeware). About your log-in problem check http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/virtual.htm trap3.

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