iso image of windows partition?
 

If I do this:

dd if=/dev/hdd of=cdrom.iso

I get an image of my cdrom that can be used to burn another copy or be mounted into the file system.

Say I have Windows XP installed in the first partition and linux in the second, and the disk is primary master.

Could I do the following:

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=windowsXP.image

Would this image be safe enough that if I were to completly repartition the disk and than do

dd if =windowsXP.image of=/dev/hda1

It would restore windows in it's entirety? Would the repartitioned disks have to keep the same sizes as before?

Could I feasibly mount this image to the linux filesystem to restore files in the event of a system problem?

I realize this isn't a pure Linux question, but I figure if I needed to ask a Windows/Linux question, I was better to ask it in a Linux forums because most Windows users know squat about computers and most Linux users know everything about Windows.

Thanks,

David Lublink

Mght work, but if you use a program like Mondo Restore from here:
http://www.mondorescue.org/
to make the ISOs, it will work great. It will make them any size, for linux and windows.

Unfortunatly it's being removed from my distro:

- app-backup/mondo-rescue-2.04 (masked by: package.mask, ~x86 keyword)
# Wolfram Schlich <w5ch1i(h@g3nt00.0rg> (26 Nov 2005)
# has security issues and will be removed from portage
# due to upstream behaviour, see bug #106497

So that's a no go. I think I will simply install Windows XP and try it.

David

I found this website : http://www.cpqlinux.com/ddbackup.html

I believe this is what I was looking for. I tested it on my boot partition(74mb) and passed it through gzip -9f and got a compressed file(11mb).

I am happy with the results.

Thanks,

David