[svlug] A cheaper ghost (fwd)

[J. Paul Reed]

An answer (his messages are bouncing?):

On a related note, this totally rocks!

Later,
Paul
  -----------------------------------------------------------------------
  J. Paul Reed                 preed at sigkill.com || web.sigkill.com/preed
  To hold on to sanity too tight is insane.  -- Nick Falzone, Pushing Tin

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2003 17:49:05 -0600
From: Robert Citek <rwcitek at alum.calberkeley.org>
To: J. Paul Reed <preed at sigkill.com>
Subject: Re: [svlug] A cheaper ghost


Hello Paul,

Funny you should ask.  This subject just came up on the UUASC list.
(UUASC=Unix Users Association of Southern California.)  I tried posting to
svlug, but my messages keep bouncing.  I can lurk just fine.

At 03:38 PM 1/11/2003 -0800, J. Paul Reed wrote:
>I was wondering if it would be possible for me backup this pristine windows
>partition to a file using dd (dd if=/dev/hdaX of=/tmp/win-backup bs=?
>count=?) and then store that on a CDROM or some such, and then at some
>point in the future, do "dd if=/tmp/win-backup of=/dev/hdaX".

You betcha.  It's not quite qhosting, but often close enough.  I recommend:
  # for backup
  dd if=/dev/hdaX | gzip > /tmp/win-backup
  # for restore
  zcat /tmp/win-backup | dd of=/dev/hdaX

>Will that work, as long as the partition doesn't move on the drive itself
>and I keep everything else the same?

Yes.  Works for me on Win98 and Win2k.  Have not tried WinXP or others.

>If so, how do I calculate the bs= and count= values?

Don't worry about it bs and count.  I do this all the time with both FAT32
and NTFS.  I have even done this under Cygwin while Windows is running
(note: not the system partition, just data)  Of course, YMMV.  So
experiment on a spare system first with your own data.  Once you get
comfortable with it, have a ball.

Regards,
- Robert