Hello, (1st post, so please excuse me if I get this wrong)

I have a user that dual-boots between WinXP and Red Hat 9.0. He is primarily Linux-centric, only using Windows for the apps. My Linux experience is moderate, this user is my only Linux client. I would like to back up his system, in a way that preserves the integrity of the disk. In my experience, ghost, does not work with Linux.

How could I back up the machine, so that both OSs are retained?

The installs both reside on the same HDD

you can use this live CD distribution (gentoo based)
http://www.sysresccd.org

It work just fine for me.

use the command partimage

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

Looks great, but how do you use it?

I would like to copy the image to a USB HDD. I cannot mount any directory that I create. I cannot edit any of the /etc/fstab, /etc/mtab files (because I do not know emacs or vim). I also do not have months to learn these archaic utilities either. The images are being copied to a RAMDisk of some sort, how can that be changed?

I guess that I am looking for a solution and not a lesson.

Sorry about the rant. It was totally uncalled for and un-professional. I dealing with some linux agro. I appreciate any help. I think I have it now...

Ok, don't worry i'll try to help you the best as i can.

Step-by-setp:
Using partimage (partition backup only)

1. start on the CD with the USB hard drive connected
2. mount the USB hard drive in the folder temp1 because it's already created by default
3. start partimage
4. select the partition
4.1 enter the path where you want to save the data
IE: /mnt/temp1/backup.partimg.gz
5. Save partition into a new image file
6. press F5
7. Use no compression or Gzip (if you want to be able to restore the MBR)
8. F5 to start the backup

NOTE; you can get more info about partimage at this link http://www.partimage.org/Partimage-manual_Usage


Using DD (partition and full disk backup)
note: dd is a bite to bite copy so if your hard drive is a 120Go you image will do 120 Go of space even if you are using only 10Go. Another thing dd is pretty slow and do not compress the output image, so be patient.... dd doesn't give any output so the only way to know that dd didn't crash is to open an other terminal window by pressing alt + F2 and type top and F1 to come back to the first terminal. (you can still change terminal window by pressing alt + F1 or F2 when the dd comand is running)

1. start on the CD with the USB hard drive connected
2. mount the USB hard drive in the folder temp1 because it's already created by default
3. use dd to backup the disk or the partition
to save the disk:
to restore the disk


if you have any question or if you have difficulty to do these step, just tell me.

Angel

I think I have it now, thanks for the replies...

/F