Backing Up a Windows System

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Author: Victor Odhner
Date:  
To: PLUG
Subject: Backing Up a Windows System
I'm cleaning up a friend's old doorstop computer.
He insists on keeping XP on it, though I think when
he sees how snappy Damn Small Linux (DSL) is on
this 300 MHz system he may find himself on Linux
most of the time.

Anyway, we all know his Windows system will
wear out at some point, or he'll step in some
doodoo and trash his registry; so I'll be faced
with putting his system back.

The source of his XP system is lost in the clutter
of the computer shop from which it was scavenged.
So what we have is what we have.

OK: I have reduced the XP partition to 9 GB
(Bless You, GPartEd!). I propose to use dd to
copy the entire 9 GB to another disk, through
a compressor. Then if the XP partition becomes
unusable I should be able to just uncompress
the whole image back onto the original partition.

Right?

Command-line suggestions for the save and
restore operations?

P.S. - I'm not worried about hardware failure here,
but if his C drive should crash I suppose that
one might be able to populate a new partition of
the same size from that same backup.

Any comments appreciated . . .

Vic
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