Checkout PartImage

perry · 08-19-2007, 03:14 PM

Hey guys, found this really cool looking partition backup software that seems to make backups a dream!

Check it out: PartImage.iso

I went looking for a free utility to backup my windows partition. I maintain a small 5 gig windows 2k partition for playing games, nothing more. Trouble is, is that on occasion I have to drop the entire partition then spend the day, perhaps the weekend reinstalling everything, with driver-reboot, driver-reboot, update-reboot, etc, etc. This way, I'll simply be able to do a complete restore, perhaps from a CD or DVD.

Why I thought you might be interested is that it is a Linux/Unix utility and has pretty cool instructions on how to setup a bootable CD for backup recovery. It's going to be an interesting day figuring out how this works and hopefully it'll work out as good as it is described.

Cheers,

- Perry

ps.
This seems to be the main support site!

Here's another site you may be interested in!

stress_junkie · 08-19-2007, 03:23 PM

Thanks Perry.

You might want to check out Mondo Rescue.

http://www.mondorescue.org/

perry · 08-20-2007, 01:30 AM

GParted is a Partition Magic clone for Linux

It'll need Slackware's parted

It works!

Check it out!

- Perry

perry · 08-20-2007, 02:51 AM

Did a resize on one of partitions on my extended 320 gig drive. Copy & Pasted the Windows 2k partition inside a new 10 gig partition (it only need about 6). Checked the results.

Resizing NTFS-3G partitions causes NTFS-3G to mark the partitions as "Dirty", I guess I'll need to run chkdsk or it's NTGS-3G counterpart to get rid of that. Tempted to drop the original NTFS partition then copy the duplicate back over it. Looks tempting, but thats enough excitement for tonight.

The copied partition is the same size, everything is in place as if it was the original. All with a simple Cut & Paste using gparted!

Thats what happens with progress I guess. Kinda makes me wonder if I can swap in and out different NTFS setups like it!

Can't see why not!

Boggles the mind!

Have a nice night.

- Perry

ps.
gparted seems to be a good compliment to HAL. Whatever it did during the operation, HAL doesn't seem to want to clutter my desktop with every partition on my machine. Only ones that make sense does it list now. (Hopefully nothing is broke!)

perry · 08-20-2007, 03:02 AM

Here's looking under your hood to see what you already have. Apparently, ntfsclone that came with the support for fuse and ntfs-3g can do the job of backing up & restoring NTFS partitions as well.

Code:

EXAMPLES
       Clone (save, backup) an NTFS volume to a non-existent file

              ntfsclone --output ntfs.img /dev/hda1

       Restore a clone image to its original partition

              ntfsclone --overwrite /dev/hda1 ntfs.img

       Space and speed-wise the most efficient way to compress a clone image

              tar -cjSf ntfs.img.tar.bz2 ntfs.img

       Uncompressing a tar archived clone image

              tar -xjSf ntfs.img.tar.bz2

       In-place compressing an NTFS volume. Note, gzip is  faster  usually  at
       least 2-4  times but it creates also bigger compressed files.

              ntfsclone --output - /dev/hda1 | bzip2 -c > ntfs.img.bz2

       Restore an NTFS volume from a compressed image

              bunzip2 -c ntfs.img.bz2 | dd of=/dev/hda1 bs=8192

       Backup  an NTFS volume to a remote host, using ssh default compression.

              ntfsclone -o - /dev/hda1 | ssh -C host 'bzip -c9 > ntfs.img.bz2'

       Restore an NTFS volume from a remote host via ssh.

              ssh host 'cat ntfs.img.bz2' | bunzip2 | dd of=/dev/hda1 bs=8192

       Pack NTFS metadata for NTFS experts

              ntfsclone --metadata --output ntfsmeta.img /dev/hda1
              tar -cjSf ntfsmeta.img.tar.bz2 ntfsmeta.img

A little f.y.i. for future reference

- perry

alred · 08-20-2007, 03:45 PM

how long does it take when performing any of the task ... ??

//i'm actually interested in your suggestions ...

.