Re: How to Back Up Win Box for Linux Install

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Author: Kevin
Date:  
To: plug-discuss
Subject: Re: How to Back Up Win Box for Linux Install

On Thu, 2005-05-26 at 08:33 -0700, G Gambill wrote:
> I would like to backup the Win drive is such a way that I could reinstall
> from the backup just incase.


Try something like this. Power off the PC. I usually insert a
secondary IDE drive because I don't have a large USB drive. Make sure
the USB or secondary IDE is >= to the size of the primary disk.

Boot your favorite linux live CD (knoppix, gentoo, ubuntu, whatever).
Unmount both disks, if they are mounted. Backup the entire primary
drive with something like:

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/sda1 (external usb drive)
-or-
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb (second IDE drive)

This should clone the disk completely, including all the partitions.

Once you have the disk cloned, make sure you can boot it. I'm not
familiar enough with Windows, but you might have to go into linux fdisk
and mark the first partition as "bootable". You *might* also have to
boot a DOS diskette first and let DOS restore it's MBR. Or, you can
probably do that from Window's "Recovery Console" or whatever they call
it.


Here's a similar way to do it, that creates a backup image file instead
of cloning the disk onto another disk. This method requires a restore
procedure since you end up with an image file instead of a bootable
clone disk. However, this is better if you want to store the backup
images on a central server somewhere.

http://firstpacket.com/comments.php?id=254_0_1_0_C4


...Kevin




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