Backtrail

About

Backtrail is a live CD/USB system that creates and restores snapshots of your system. Restore the image, even to a new blank drive, and recover in minutes from ransomware and viruses, deletions, hardware damage, and hackers.

Backtrail is an independent open source project. Version 1.0 is its first release.

Heritage

Backtrail continues Redo Rescue (earlier known as Redo Backup), created by Zebradots Software in 2010. Redo Rescue's last release was 4.0.0 in 2021, and its development stopped in October 2023 while 5.0.0 was still unreleased. Backtrail starts from that point, with Redo Rescue's full commit history, and carries the work forward:

• Compatible images: Backtrail keeps the .redo image format, so backups made with Redo Rescue, and with Redo Backup 1.0.4, restore with Backtrail.
• Same approach: a live system with a simple step-by-step app on top of sfdisk and partclone, for bare-metal backup and recovery.
• Maintained: a current Debian base with security updates, 32-bit PC support, translations and fixes for the problems found since.

Backtrail has its own name and artwork because Redo Rescue's logos and graphics are not licensed for derived projects. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Zebradots Software. See HERITAGE.md for what Backtrail changed from Redo Rescue and why, and CHANGES.md for the release history of both.

Screenshots

Boot menu, welcome screen, partition selection, backup progress, detailed log (dark mode) and the language menu. The drives shown are sample data.

Features

• Free and open source software
• Create a backup image in a few clicks
• Live system; works on machines that won't even boot
• Provides VNC access for remote assistance
• Bare-metal recovery restores master boot record, partition table
• Selectively restore certain parts
• Optionally re-map original partitions to different places
• UEFI Secure Boot support
• Boots on 64-bit (Debian 13) and 32-bit (Debian 12) PCs from a single ISO
• ISO can be written to CD or USB
• Error handling and low space warnings
• Detailed logs can be copied to clipboard
• Restores images made with Redo Rescue and Redo Backup 1.0.4
• Web application with PHP backend, shown in its own window (WebKitGTK)
• Displays Chinese, Japanese and Korean partition labels and file names
• Interface with light and dark modes
• Interface in English, Korean, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, German, French and Brazilian Portuguese
• System tools and diagnostic programs included in image
• Unified backup file format with ability to add notes
• Shared network drive search and detection
• Support for various block devices
• Read/write support for Samba/CIFS shares, NFS shares, and SSH filesystems

Download

Backtrail 1.0 is in preparation and has no published ISO yet; build one as described under Build. Releases will be published on the Releases page.

Examples

Backtrail can be used in countless ways to recover from disaster, replicate a system, or just set things back to how they were before. Here are some example use cases:

• You've installed and activated Windows, configured all the necessary drivers, and installed an office suite for a family member. Because of the time involved, you don't want to have to repeat this process again. Use Backtrail to save a backup image to a USB stick in case the hard drive crashes.

• A teacher has dozens of identical machines in her classroom that run the same Linux-based operating system. She can use Backtrail to make a snapshot image of the working system, so that if a student's system becomes unusable she can easily restore the system to working condition in minutes.

• A company laptop has many different software components that require tedious configuration, and its users are more likely to click on links to malware or viruses. Use Backtrail to resize the existing partitions, create a backup partition on the same drive, and save a backup image.

• An office server needs to be upgraded with all new hardware, but the old system needs to stay running while the replacement is prepared. Use Backtrail to create an image, restore it to new hardware, and then make the switch with minimal downtime, while preserving the old machine in case of failure.

Warning

Backtrail is designed to restore a backup image to the same system it was taken from. Even a byte-for-byte clone of a Windows drive to a target system that is nearly identical may fail to boot, regardless of the backup software used. Certain system changes can easily render a Windows, Mac, or Linux machine unbootable: changing hardware components, adding/removing/swapping disks, making significant configuration changes, or restoring to a different machine are all likely to cause boot issues. Similarly, swapping, moving, resizing, or reordering partitions will almost certainly render most operating systems unbootable. After such changes, an entire backup can be restored successfully (and all files are safely stored on the drive), yet the operating system may fail to boot. This is not a limitation of the backup solution, but the result of changes to the system configuration. We strongly recommend creating a new backup image after changes are made to your system.

Backtrail relies on sfdisk to backup and restore partition tables, and partclone to create and restore backups of the data on each partition. Both are considered very reliable but could contain unknown bugs.

Notes

• By default the system logs in as the root user with password redo.

Build

To build an ISO image from within Debian Linux:

1. git clone https://github.com/johnhsb/backtrail.git
2. cd backtrail
3. sudo ./make

The result is backtrail-VERSION.iso, for example backtrail-1.0.0.iso.

The build needs a Debian or Ubuntu machine with internet access. ./make first checks the tools it uses (debootstrap, squashfs-tools, xorriso, mtools, dosfstools, rsync, perl, GRUB and its Secure Boot files) and installs any that are missing with apt-get, so nothing needs to be installed beforehand.

The ISO contains a 64-bit (Debian 13) and a 32-bit (Debian 12) live system; the boot menu picks one based on the CPU. Build targets are set by TARGETS in the make script.

After building, it's easy to modify a file or install a package without rebuilding and downloading all the packages again:

1. sudo ./make changes (or sudo ./make changes amd64 / i386 for one system)
2. Make your changes to the live system image
3. exit and the ISO will be updated automatically

Downloaded packages are kept in cache/ (one folder per system), so later builds only download packages that changed. To remove all build files (the base system archives and cache/ are kept), run sudo ./make clean; delete cache/ to free its space.

The logo, boot menu, splash screen and wallpaper images are generated from branding/src; see branding/README.md.

Source code for Redo Rescue releases before its move to GitHub can be found on SourceForge.

License

Backtrail is released under the GNU GPLv3, like Redo Rescue, on which it is based.

• Copyright (C) 2026 The Backtrail Authors
• Copyright (C) 2010-2023 Zebradots Software (Redo Rescue)

Redo Rescue's distinctive logos and graphics are not released under the GNU GPLv3 and require derived projects to use their own. Backtrail replaces all of them with its own artwork in branding/. The Noto Sans CJK and Sora typefaces are licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1; the boot menu uses subsets of Noto Sans CJK, named "Backtrail Sans".

Source code

The ISO is built from this repository and from Debian packages. Each live system lists its packages in /live-amd64/filesystem.packages and /live-i386/filesystem.packages on the ISO, and each release attaches the same lists. The source of every listed package version is available from Debian; if you cannot get it there, ask in an issue and it will be provided.