Ask Slashdot: Create Custom Recovery Partitions With FOSS?

First time accepted submitter KowboyKrash writes "OK, a little background: I use Acronis to create custom recovery partitions for my personal computers that include all my software and drivers. I also work for a growing computer repair shop which has ventured into eBay sales of refurbished computers. We receive the machines with wiped hard drives. Since we get multiples of each model, we load everything on one then make images with Clonezilla. It would be nice to set up recovery partitions as well. Acronis is out of the question, since it would cost for a license for each machine. Do any Slashdotters know of any FOSS options?"

Re:No, ntfsclone is what you're looking for.

[Ayourk]

For the MBR being broken, why not just take a dd image of that section of the HDD and present that as an option as part of the repair process? Having backups of the MBR, partition table and FAT are good ideas for recovery options IMHO.