How to create ghost image of hard disk for free?

If you are the person who want to backup
complete disk along with OS. So lets see
how we can create hard disk image or
ghost image or disk clone without using
those highly priced ghost creating
software.
Requirements:
Ubuntu Live CD/DVD, A hard disk with
more capacity than the one you want to
clone and some basic knowledge ofLinux.
Procedure:
Linux provides disk dumping feature, this
feature can be used for creating complete
backup of any possible storage media. And
we will use this feature of Linux command
shell to create ghost images. While writing
this tutorial I am assuming that you want
to backup a hard disk which already
havean OS installed in it.
Boot from Ubuntu Live CD/DVD. Now
mount the hard disk youwant to take
backup on /mnt folder. Now take backup
using following commands,
[root@localhost ~]dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/
mnt/ image.img
This will create complete image of hard
disk partition sda1, next you must take
backup of partition table,
[root@localhost ~]#dd if=/dev/sda of=/
mnt/ partitiontable.i mg count=0 bs=512
or
[root@localhost ~]#dd if=/dev/sda of=/
mnt/ partitiontable.i mg count=0 bs=1024
Now while restoring first restore partition
table on new hard disk
[root@localhost ~]#dd if=/mnt/
partitiontable.i mg of=/dev/sda count=0
bs=512
or
[root@localhost ~]#dd if=/mnt/
partitiontable.i mg of=/dev/sda count=0
bs=1024
Finally restore ghost image,
[root@localhost ~]#partprobe /dev/sda
[root@localhost ~]#dd if=/mnt/
image.img of=/dev/sda1
Now please note that when you'll create
ghost image no matter what amount of
data you have in disk your ghost disk will
be of actual size of source hard disk, that
meansif your source hard disk is 40GB in
size then your ghost hard disk will also be
of 40GB. If you think above tutorial was
little geeky then even I don't take different
view from you, yes its really little geeky but
believe me its not that difficult. If you loved
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with your friends... Thanks for reading..