[OLUG] dd

[Adam Lassek]

I'm not sure how big the mbr is exactly, but couldn't you use dd to back
it up? And then you could backup the rest with tar.

Dave Burchell wrote:
> 
> mesc says:
> 
> > I think when I try dd it tries to copy the whole /dev/hda1(2.0 GB
> > instead of just it's contents,the win dir(672 MB)I've tried the size
> > option (ibs&obs)in the dd man page but I must be doing something
> > wrong.How can I use dd to copy just my win dir on /dev/hda1 not the
> > whole partition?
> 
> I'm glad we are talking about this because I need to put this to use
> right away.
> 
> I've got an NT machine I want to back up.  I understand that NT is
> inherently unstable and will someday destroy itself (and even if it
> wasn't the disk could fail at any time).  I could just reinstall NT
> 4.0, the service pack, and the server software I need, but I could save
> valuable time if I have a quick-to-recover backup.
> 
> Let's say I have installed Linux on another partition of this NT
> machine and I have set it up for dual booting.  I see two obvious
> options for doing a backup.
> 
> 1) Boot Linux and use "dd" on the (unmounted) windows partition.  Copy
> an image of that partition to the Linux partition or tape drive.  The
> drawbacks here are that I can't restore individual files and the image
> of the partition will be the size of the partition, not the size of the
> amount of space all of the files take up on the disk.  If my 2.0 GB
> partition is only half full I still need to create a 2.0 GB backup
> (although this could be brought down with compression).
> 
> 2) Boot Linux and use "tar" to copy all of the files from the (mounted)
> windows partition to the Linux partition or a tape drive.
> 
> But I don't know if (2) will work, because how will I make the Windows
> partition bootable when I restore it?  Say I install a new, blank HD in
> the machine and partition it as the old HD was.  Next I install Linux
> on its partition, boot Linux, and create an MS DOS/Windows filesystem
> on the partition.  I copy my Windows NT files to the DOS filesystem
> using "tar".
> 
> Now how do I make it bootable?  I know how I could do it if I was
> restoring Linux: I could just run "lilo" after editing lilo.conf to
> point to the right kernel file.
> 
> (By the way, if you are going to use "dd" to make a backup of the raw
> partition, be it a dos/windows filesystem, a Linux filesystem, or any
> other kind, you most likely want that partition to be unmounted.)
> 
> >                 Thank you,Gary Martin.
> 
> --
> Dave Burchell                                          40.49'N, 96.41'W
> Free your mind and your software will follow.              402-467-1619
> http://incolor.inetnebr.com/burchell/                  burchell at acm.org
> 
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