DISCLAIMER: This article is intended to be read by people who have some basic knowledge of Linux, and some rudimentary familiarity with using the command line interface on it.
Let me give you a warning before you start reading. I know this article is a bit long, and it can get a bit technical in places, but this is only because I opted to explain, with as much detail as possible how things work, so it can help people understand the process, and not follow it blindly, for their own benefit.
If you are just looking for the “simple” version, just glance over the article, and read the parts that contain the commands (lines starting with “#”), along with some brief explanations provided below said commands.
Many people pay for software like Norton Ghost, etc to take images/snapshots or even backups of their current PCs, so that they are able to recover later from them, in the event of a hard disk failure or accidental deletion, or even a migration of their current system to a newly purchased one. This method can even be used to recover data from a hard drive that has failed/is corrupt/has been deleted accidentally.
What is not a very well known fact, is that you can get all that functionality for free, using Linux.
The process that will be described below, is pretty much universal, and supports the vast majority of operating systems out there, as you can use it, even for windows machines, by using a linux live CD, without the need to actually install anything at all on your machine. You just run the system off, of the CD!
