I want to image my dual boot system onto a spanned DVD set. I know there are a few softwares out there that will do this. What do you guys suggest? I don't know much about which softwares are strong at what things.

If you wanna copy partitions, try partimage. partimage can break the image into convenient size chunks for you, but the images are binary images. For copying the entire image of the disk, systemimager works great.. this sort of mirrors the entire hard disk

you could also use dd of course, though dd will to copy blank spaces too..

or if you really keen, you can theoretically use cp too (cp /dev/hd? ...)

Thanks.

Can I ask a little info?

partimage: Is this prog easy to restore a hard drive with?

dd: By "copying blank spaces", do you mean there is no compression? i.e. 40gb drive -> 40gb image?


I am not oppossed to use a window app either. Just trying to gather everyone's opinion.

> partimage: Is this prog easy to restore a hard drive with?

yup, pretty simple.. you can burn a system restore CD (or use knoppix) and boot your comp off it. then you can use partimage to grab the images from an image server running partimaged.. check out the faq on partimage website..

> dd: By "copying blank spaces", do you mean there is no compression? i.e. 40gb drive -> 40gb image?

technically yes (unlike tar, which would only tar up occupied blocks).. of course, you could tgz the dd image later.. but dont know how much good that would do..

> I am not oppossed to use a window app either. Just trying to gather everyone's opinion.

sorry. no idea about windows.