Is it possible to make an ISO of a working computer?

General Discussions
1

So I’d like to make an ISO Image of my current system. I have a dual boot system; Windows 10 (What I play Diablo4 and Steam won’t install on my Linux version :winking_face_with_tongue:) & Debian.
My Windows drives look like this:

Disk model: Samsung SSD 970 EVO plus 1TB            
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 46B6087B-D3A1-4C66-A8FA-503E28A9A4C3

Device              Start        End    Sectors   Size Type
/dev/nvme1n1p1       2048     206847     204800   100M EFI System
/dev/nvme1n1p2     206848     239615      32768    16M Microsoft reserved
/dev/nvme1n1p3     239616 1952401821 1952162206 930.9G Microsoft basic data
/dev/nvme1n1p4 1952403456 1953521663    1118208   546M Windows recovery environment


Disk /dev/sda: 232.89 GiB, 250059350016 bytes, 488397168 sectors
Disk model: WDC WD2500AAJS-0
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt

And Debian’s drives look like this:

Disk model: Samsung SSD 960 EVO 500GB               
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 8910A898-836D-4261-BCDB-75B7F8BFB452

Device             Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1      2048 195311615 195309568  93.1G Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p2 195311616 390623231 195311616  93.1G Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p3 390623232 781248511 390625280 186.3G Linux swap
/dev/nvme0n1p4 781248512 976771071 195522560  93.2G Linux filesystem


Disk /dev/sdb: 2.73 TiB, 3000592982016 bytes, 5860533168 sectors
Disk model: WDC WD30EZAZ-22S
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Device          Start        End    Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sdb1        2048 2929686527 2929684480  1.4T Linux filesystem
/dev/sdb2  2929686528 5860532223 2930845696  1.4T Linux filesystem

I want to make ISOs of both of them so I can do re-installs if disaster strikes. I want to store the ISOs on a External Hard drive. I thought of using the DD command but I’m afraid it will wipe the entire drive I want to save the ISO Images on.
So any suggestions are welcome.

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Weekly Forum Summary
2

Hi @tmick ,

You mean something like this ? :

Many File systems are supported: (1) ext2, ext3, ext4, reiserfs, reiser4, xfs, jfs, btrfs (testing), f2fs and nilfs2 of GNU/Linux, (2) FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, exFAT and NTFS of MS Windows, (3) HFS+ and APFS of Mac OS, (4) UFS of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, (5) minix of Minix, and (6) VMFS3 and VMFS5 of VMWare ESX. Therefore you can clone GNU/Linux, MS windows, Intel-based Mac OS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Minix, VMWare ESX and Chrome OS/Chromium OS, no matter it’s 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x86-64) OS. For these file systems, only used blocks in partition are saved and restored by Partclone. For unsupported file system, sector-to-sector copy is done by dd in Clonezilla.

EDIT - or this:

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3

I looked at Rescuezilla and when I searched the Debian Repos I found this Weresync but It only seems to do one partition so that’s not useful to me :cry:
I’ll read more on the Rescuezilla thing.
Thanks for the links. :partying_face:

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4

Do not worry: dd output file must not represent the whole target device, you can use regular file as dd output.

At the same time dd creates raw disk image file which is not compliant with ISO 9660 specification being, well, just raw disk image. Nevertheless, you can mount such an image using losetup -f -P <disk_image> command.

P.S. I’d strongly recommend to boot from live CD before dd to ensure that source drive is inactive data (not system) drive.

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