Rescuezilla is the graphical user interface (GUI) of the famous Clonezilla. It is a derivative of Redo Backup and Recovery (now called Redo Rescue) which had been abandoned for 7 years. It has been carefully rebuilt from scratch to be fully compatible with the Clonezilla industry standard.
Rescuezilla allows you to perform backups, restoration, and recovery, even if you cannot boot into your regular operating system. It doesn't matter if you use Windows, Mac, or Linux.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to restore a previously cloned system image using the wonderful Open Source tool, Rescuezilla.
We need to have two things prepared in advance, a minimum 2GB USB and another one of 64GB:
1. We need to download and install Rescuezilla on a live storage USB, we recommend a minimum 2GB USB.
You can download the Rescuezilla ISO from the official tool's website here.
Create an installation image as if it were a Linux distro (which it is) with balenaEtcher or Ventoy, follow our Ventoy tutorial (in step 5, replace the Windows ISO with Rescuezilla).
2. Download and unzip the .zip file of the previously cloned system image into the root of the 64GB USB, we recommend it to be formatted in exFAT or NTFS for greater simplicity and compatibility.
NOTE: This process formats your hard drive, make sure to have a backup of important files.
Once we have everything ready, follow these steps to restore the image:
1. Connect the USB with Rescuezilla to your Slimbook. To access the boot menu, you have to repeatedly press F7 or F10 when it is booting and choose the Rescuezilla boot USB. Choose the language.
2. Once Rescuezilla has started, you will be greeted with a menu. Select "Restore".
3. Rescuezilla will show you a list of available storage devices. Select the USB where you have the uncompressed image you want to restore. In our case, we select the 64GB USB (57.8GB usable) and click Next.
4. If we have correctly uncompressed the .zip file in the root of the USB, it should recognize the restoration image correctly. Select the correct one and click Next.
5. Tell Rescuezilla where you want to restore the backup. This can be your hard drive or an external location if you are restoring from an external device.
6. Once you have selected the destination location, confirm your selections and wait for Rescuezilla to restore the backup. Depending on the size of your backup and the speed of the storage device, this may take some time.
7. After the restoration is complete, the last thing left would be to resize the partition since unfortunately Rescuezilla does not allow this step to be done automatically.
8. Close the Rescuezilla window and access GParted, it is located on the desktop as a shortcut.
9. Select the disk where we have restored the image by clicking on the top right of the window, in our case it is /dev/sdc (931.51GB), yours may be different with a different size.
10. Once the disk is selected, this window will appear, we will have to choose the partition where the data is stored and resize it to fit the entire disk. Right-click on the ext4 partition and choose the Resize/Move option.
11. This small window will appear, we will have to drag the bar to the end or enter a very high number in the "New size" field and it will do it automatically. After this, click Resize/Move again.
12. Finally, we would have to confirm, click the OK symbol and wait for it to finish, it should not take more than a few seconds.
13. Once the restoration is successfully completed and we have resized the partition, restart your Slimbook. You should now be able to access your restored operating system.
It is important to note that these steps may vary slightly depending on the specific version of Rescuezilla you are using, so make sure to consult the official documentation or help resources provided by Rescuezilla if you encounter any discrepancies. If you have any technical issues, do not hesitate to contact us through
warranty support..
