Thanks to all who responded.

I liked Der Hans suggestion but for another project.

I went with Alan's "dd" technique.  It seems to have worked. It claimed a
reasonable read/write count.  The USB drive lose an appropriate amount of
free space.  Of course, I won't know for sure till such time as I need to
restore; which probably will never happen.  ;-)

The laptop is loading CentOS 4 as I type.  I may need to be at the
InstallFest to get such things as the USB WiFi and the Linksys 10/100 NIC
pcmcia working.

Thanks again

George

> Subject: Re: How to Back Up Win Box for Linux Install
> From: "Alan Dayley" <alandd@consultpros.com>
>
> G Gambill said:
> > I have a Win 2K laptop with USB.
> >
> > I also have a large external USB drive that is recognized and mounted
> > with ubuntu live.
> >
> > I would like to backup the Win drive is such a way that I could
> > reinstall from the backup just incase.
> >
> > Any suggestions?
>
> The most direct solution is 'dd' to make an image.
>
> 1. Boot ubuntu live.
> 2. Don't mount the laptop hard drive.
> 3. Mount the USB hard drive.
>
> I am assuming:
> - The USB hard drive is formated with a mountable file system.
> - The USB hard drive has more capacity available than all the capacity of
> the laptop hard drive.
> - The USB hard drive is now mounted at /mnt/usbdrive.
> - The laptop hard drive is /dev/hda.
> Adjust the following commands to match your actual setup.
>
> 4. In a console or terminal issue the following command as root:
>
> dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/usbdrive/hdabackup.bin bs=512
>
> This command will copy the laptop hard drive starting at block 0 all the
> way to the end, to a file called 'hdabackup.bin' in the root directory of
> the USB drive.  It will probably go faster if you use a larger value for
> block size (bs=) but always use multiples of 512 for the value.  512 is
> the safest value to use.
>
> 5. The command will *not* provide feedback or a progress meter or
> anything.  It can be safely stopped with a Ctl-C but the destination file
> will be incomplete, obviously.
>
> 6. When complete you will get a print of the number of 'records' ie.
> blocks transferred.
>
> Restoring is simply booting to the same environment and reversing the
> command by swapping the 'if=' and 'of=' (input file, output file)
> specifications.
>
> Important: This will backup all the laptop harddrive, including MBR,
> partitions and blank space.  The restore will restore it all, wiping out
> anything you newly placed on the hard drive.
>
> There are other more elegant solutions, I'm sure, but this proceedure has
> worked for me in the past.  Sometimes bulk is good!
>
> Alan
>
>


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