Partition Image 0.6.6

Partition Image application is a Linux/UNIX utility which saves partitions in many formats (see below) to an image file.
The image file can be compressed in the GZIP/BZIP2 formats to save disk space, and split into multiple files to be copied on removable floppies (ZIP for example); partitions can be saved across the network since version 0.6.0.
Partition Image will only copy data from the used portions of the partition. For speed and efficiency, free blocks are not written to the image file.
This is unlike the dd command, which also copies empty blocks. Partition Image also works for large, very full partitions. For example, a full 1 GB partition can be compressed with gzip down to 400MB.
This is very useful to save partitions to an image in some cases:
- First you can restore your linux partition if there is a problem (virus, file system errors, manipulation error) . When you have a problem, you just have to restore the partition, and after 10 minutes, you have the original partition. You can write the image to a CD-R if you dont want the image to use hard-disk space.
- This utility can be used to install many identical PCs. For example, if you buy 50 PCs, with the same hardware, and you want to install the same linux systems on all 50 PCs, you will save a lot of time. Indeed, you just have to install on the first PC and create an image from it. For the 49 others, you can use the image file and Partition Images restore function.