Error backing up Linux ext3 partition with Partimage

[johnbolton]

I have a problem backing up a Linux system. It has the following layout:

/dev/sda1 = /boot (250 MB)
/dev/sda2 = / (4 GB)
/dev/sda3 = SWAP (5 GB)
/dev/sda5 = /db (4.5 GB)
/dev/sda6 = /opt (145 GB)

All partitions are ext3, except for the SWAP partition.

I am using the PING live CD, version 3.00.

My goal is to back up the entire hard disk to a another machine over the network. After the PING CD boots, I select mostly default options:

* Mount a network share using CIFS
* Select all partitions to be backed up
* Select not to back up the file permissions
* Select to reduce the partitions beforehand so I can restore to a smaller hard disk if necessary.

Partitions /dev/sda1 through /dev/sda5 back up just fine. /dev/sda6 however does not backup with Partimage so zsplit is used. Partimage error is "[Main] main.cpp->main #703: End of operation: FAILED"

I don't want to use zsplit because the image ends up being more than 10x larger than it needs to be. There is only about 600MB of data on this partition and the sum of the zsplit files is more than 8GB.

What's worse is that after the backup completes, the /dev/sda6 partition is corrupted and can no longer be mounted. I suspect the attempt to use PartImage is what is corrupting the partition.

Can anyone recommend troubleshooting procedures so I can figure out what's going on? Is there a partition size limit?

Thanks,

John