Extracting files from Clonezilla images

Question

Is there a way to browse Clonezilla images and extract individual files from them without restoring the whole image?

Answer 1

Better use the partclone utility instead:

1. cd /home/partimag/YOURIMAGE/
2. Depending on compression method used:
   • If the image is compressed with gzip: cat dir/hda2.ntfs-ptcl-img.gz.* | gunzip | partclone.restore --restore_raw_file -C -s - -o hda2.img
   • If the image is compressed with zstd: zstdcat dir/hda2.ntfs-ptcl-img.zst.* | partclone.restore --restore_raw_file -C -s - -o hda2.img
3. mount -o loop hda2.img /mnt -t ntfs -o ro

Note: This needs to be done as root, since partclone requires root permissions to write the image, and the mount command will likely only work as root. For zst images you'll need to install zstd (e.g. apt install zstd)

See also CloneZilla FAQ Entry: "How can I restore those *-ptcl-img.* images into a file manually?"

Answer 2

You should be able to mount your CloneZilla image to extract files from it. See instructions here.

1. Prepare a large disk in Linux

2. Say if your image is /home/partimag/YOURIMAGE/, and the image is /home/partimag/YOURIMAGE/hda1.ntfs-img.aa, hda1.ntfs-img.ab... run

    file /home/partimag/YOURIMAGE/hda1.ntfs-img.aa
   

   to see it's gzip, bzip or lzop image. Say it's gzip, then you can run

    cat /home/partimag/YOURIMAGE/hda1.ntfs-img.* | gzip -d -c | ntfsclone --restore-image -o hda1.img -
   

   Then you will have a "hda1.img" which you can mount it by

    mount -o loop -t ntfs hda1.img /mnt
   

   Then all the files are in /mnt/

Note: For lzo images, replace gzip -d -c with lzop -d -c

Answer 3

I've written a program called clonezilla-util which can mount Clonezilla archives in Windows.

You can mount to a drive letter using this command (requires the Dokan driver):

clonezilla-util.exe mount --input <clonzilla folder> --mount L:\

Then you can access the files in explorer:

Alternate approach

If you don't want to use the Dokan driver, you can extract the partition images using this command:

clonezilla-util.exe extract-partition-image --input <clonzilla folder> --output <folder to extract to>

That creates a file for each partition in the Clonezilla archive.

You can then use 7-Zip to inspect the contents:

Answer 4

I've made a video that demonstrates how to restore the full disk backup into a virtual machine. Hope it helps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ainjV3X6wqQ

Basically, what you need to do is:

• Create a VM in VirtualBox (free)
• Create a virtual disk image for the VM with at least the same size of the backed up disk
• Store your clonezilla backup in an external HDD or something which can be accessed from the VM
• Run your VM with the clonezilla ISO in its virtual drive
• Restore the backup like you would in a real machine

Answer 5

7-Zip can unpack most images (which looks much like unpacking a regular .zip archive). It supports almost all common filesystems (FAT, NTFS, ext3, ext4,...).

Note that for compressed multi-part images (those like sdb2.dd-ptcl-img.gz.aa .. sdb2.dd-ptcl-img.gz.ck) you would need enough empty space on your disk to unpack the image from the archive first.

Answer 6

Taken from this article:

There are some limitations. As pointed out earlier, Clonezilla can't restore an image to a drive that is smaller than the original drive. It also doesn't allow for retrieving specific files in an image, it's the whole partition or nothing.

Since the Linux way is pretty much a lucky hack, I'd wait until this feature is officially developed for Windows.

Answer 7

Try this software:

http://www.mountimage.com/

It looks like it could do it. 14 day trial.