[svlug] Back up Windows 7 Pro from Fedora...

[Michael Robinson]

My Windows 7 pro system is on a dedicated 128 gig Samsung SSD.  I need
a method that will work as well for Windows 7 Home Premium as it will
for Windows 7 pro.  I'm guessing to back up the boot sector on the
SSD and the partition layout that I need the first four megabytes off
of the SSD using dd.  I did the following to make a boot sector backup:

	dd if=/dev/sdb of=bootsectorssd.img bs=512k count=8

I then figured that ntfs-3g is good enough for backup purposes and
copied the files to a network mounted hard disk.

        cp -arv windows7prosystem/* /root/Backup/May_4_2014/Win7Pro

I am using Fedora 21 updated as much as possible.  Tried Fedora 22, 
it isn't ready yet.  Fedora 22 is how I got into the mess with 
Windows 7 Home Premium in the first place when I restored that 
system on my laptop.  Ninety dollars later, I paid to have the system
purged of spyware and updated.

The obvious problem with my backup method, I don't compress the files.
Another problem, I'm trusting that ntfs-3g is good enough to copy the
files off and later copy them to a newly created empty ntfs file system.
A bit by bit backup of the SSD is the safest, but it will jamb up my
100mb-1gb network.  Doing a 128 gig bit dump also takes days.

I need a simple and effective full backup method that employs
compression so it is fast and I want file by file verification.  
I have a FreeNAS9 based NAS, but I am having permission issues 
using it and it is harder to use it from Linux than it is to use
it from Windows.  Uge :-(  I hate Windows, it is a necessary evil
though at times.

I'm setting up Fedora 21 under Virtualbox on top of Windows 7 Home
Premium for web development on the laptop, it is job related.  I want
to back that virtual machine up separately from the Windows 7 system.

Can I test my boot sector backup using Virtualbox somehow???

     -- Michael.