Hello Guys and Gals:
In the next few weeks I plan on repurposing my Thinkpad T420s laptop to run only Slackware 64 14.2 in a fully encrypted setup as described in the README_LVM.TXT README_CRYPT.TXT docs. Currently it runs Slackware 64 14.1 (supplemented with SBo built packages and some Alien built packages), and dual boots a Win7 setup. The BIOS is set for MBR Booting, so I won't need to mess with UEFI in the future.

In the last couple of years, I've noticed that the only thing I use Windows for is to get its latest patches and update any addon software I have there. But, keeping patched is not the same as using.

Before I bite the bullet and repartition/repurpose, I'd like some advice on what to use to backup/archive the current Win7 setup.

I have a Western Digital USB external hard drive that I have split up into ext4 and ntfs partitions, and have been using rdiff-backup to backup the Slackware 14.1 setup, but I've _never_ backed up the Win7 partitions (Lenovo has a hidden partition on there, too).

Anyway, my first inclination is to just write some wrapper scripts to use rdiff-backup on those ntfs partitions from the T420s to the external drive. But before I do that, I thought I'd ask here if there are better/other ideas on that. I'm not against using a Windows program, but my Windows skills are considerably atrophied, and this repurpose project may be the start of removing Windows from all of my current hardware.

Thanks in advance for any recommentations.

What exactly are you wanting to back up? As long as you have the product key, you can download Windows 7 ISOs (although, I believe you have to use torrents now because Microsoft stopped providing them around the time Windows 10 was released), use your product key during installation, and get a fully activated and legal copy of Windows back on your computer. And even better, it wouldn't include any extra software that Lenovo included (although, it will likely lack some drivers, so it'd be handy to download those from Lenovo's support site to a thumbdrive before you attempt to reinstall Windows). Because of that, I don't think it's very important to create an image of your Windows install, but that's personal preference.

For the random files you may need to save, copy them to a thumbdrive, sync them to a cloud service, copy them to a network drive, burn to a CD, etc.

I ended up being in your situation a few years ago. I had my desktop dual-booted for quite some time, but I found I was hardly ever going into Windows and that it was just wasting on my drive. So I ended up removing Windows completely and haven't ever looked back.

I've never backed up a Windows machine, but just from what you are saying, I would use Clonezilla to image the relevant partitions.

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Why not just get an SSD HD and replace your windows HD. They're cheap enough now. That way you can always put it back to the way it was if you need to.

I use the built-in Windows backup software. Look in the Control Panel.

As you seek to backup the Windows system that implies some desire to preserve the install. Perhaps an alternate approach might interest you.

I have a sole Windows system. I have 7 and 10 installed. Both systems are installed as bootable partitions, but I do not have GRUB boot options for either Windows system. I can only use both Windows systems using VirtualBox. I run both as virtual machines using raw disk access. Currently the host system is Ubuntu MATE, although that is going to change in the near future, likely Slackware or Salix 14.2.

As you already have 14.1 installed, using raw disk access in VirtualBox is one way to keep the Windows system intact and never again bother with dual booting. Updating to 14.2 would preserve the VirtualBox configurations and you would still have access to Windows 7.

I am not using either Windows systems for production of any type. About once a month I boot the computer and then run both Windows systems through VirtualBox. After updating I run the Windows backup utility.

I have additional partitions on the hard drive, which in both Windows systems get mapped to E:. An external drive would be similar.

I never have had a reason or need to test the backups and cannot vouch for the reliability. I do not notice a lot of flack on the web about the topic and I presume restoring works just fine.

One caveat with Windows 7 is VirtualBox does not support running 7 using UEFI mode. You mentioned you configured your system to avoid UEFI so you should have no problems running 7 using raw disk access. VirtualBox does support UEFI for Windows 10.

Go to the Western Digital website. There you can download an excellent disk imaging utility specifically designed for imaging windows. It is free and will work as long as one of the drives involved is from WD. It is actually a stripped down version of Acronies True Image which is one of the most popular imaging utilities for windows.

if you got a few bucks you could buy a internal hdd (laptop) get a usb sata cord to hook it up then get some free cloning software then just clone it to that hdd . done you should even be able to use it for a boot off usb OS too. I have.

then if you need to restore windows, well you'd get the old copy of it but there ya go.

or just one of them backup external hdds that they sell should work too for a back up not clone.

Slackware includes ntfsclone which I use for imaging NTFS partitions. The special image format is good for saving storage space, but cannot be loop mounted, so accessing files requires a full partition restore.

A while back I swapped out the disk in a Win7/(multiple) Linux laptop. The Win7 backup/restore worked fine - didn't even need reactivation.
PITA compared to Linux, but that was expected. And slow too, but it worked as advertised. However, I'd be inclined not to mess with partition layout too much personally - especially the system (boot) partition. Been bitten in the past.

if I was in windows I could tell you what I used, and it cloned my windows 10 rather fast too so I could move it to a sdd, then install Linux on same as well. then I cloned win10 to a 32GB internal sdd just for keep sake. that ones boots through eSata cable. ... got a shut down slack-mirror - hold on...

http://www.todo-backup.com/products/...p-software.htm

easeUS todo backup free
if I remember correctly my partitions where not even even even and this thing still made it work.

If you're just looking to preserve/backup your OEM (or any other) activation, and can just reinstall any other 3rd party software if you do eventually end up reinstalling Windows, then Josh Cell's Advanced Token Manager is a good solution.

Thanks, one and all: so many good ideas.

@bassmadrigal - good questions, realistically the only thing I can think of that might really need saving would be the Win7 'Documents and Settings' stuff. And for that my only real concern would be for something I might need or be liable for down the road - e.g. old tax forms. I hadn't really given any thought to re-installing Win7 afterwords.

@notKlaatu - thank you. Hadn't thought about Clonezilla. Will need to research it some.

@coldbeer - thank you, too. Hadn't thought about this at all. Just put in a new ssd, get performance improvements, and the original drive _is_ the back up. Not sure about the 'cheap enough' part, but perhaps I'm shopping now.

@upnort - I have never messed with VirtualBox (though I've wondered about possibly using it). What you describe is intriguing, and I may mess with this idea using other hardware. But my main thing here was to experiment with the full disk enryption. Keeping the existing partitioning isn't really part of my plan (unless I opt for coldbeer's idea of "just use a new drive"). Supposing, I did that (get a new drive for my encryption project); if I packed the original drive into an external USB enclosure, would what you describe be able to use the original (Win7 / Slack 14.1) drive that way?

@allend - thank you. I did not know about ntfsclone, or that I already had it available. Again, more for me to look into - which is what I really wanted to get from this post.

@kilgoretrout - another thank you, too. My current target for the backup is a WD product, so something else to check out.

@BW-userx - more to check out (easeUS todo backup free) - another thank you!

@Skaendo - again more software I'd never heard of, thought of - will add it to my list of things to check out and possibly use the next time I boot into the Win7 partition of the T420s

Thank you, everyone. This forum is just so very useful and helpful.

If you're just wanting to save files, imaging the disk might be a bit of overkill (but then you're covered in case you miss something). It is quite easy to back up your user directory to another location (probably another computer on the network or to a thumbdrive) and that would probably be the route I'd go. Backup solutions are more for situations where you might need to restore that data, not just occasionally reference it. If you back up your whole disk to an image file, you need to mount that whole image file or restore the backup to get access to that file. If the files are just stored under some folder on your computer, it is much easier to access them (and they can be indexed so they can be searched).

But learning is half the fun, so it might be a good learning exercise to image a drive and try various other backup solutions

Interesting question. I never tried that. My short reply is should be.

My longer answer:

The VirtualBox interface pops an alert dialog when images or devices are missing, such as an external drive, but will not prevent using VirtualBox. When the external drive is connected then VirtualBox would start without complaint. The popup dialog might be a nominal nuisance when using other virtual machines, but not destructive or a show stopper.

A caveat with the plan is Windows is designed to have temper tantrums when not installed in an expected location. Various hardware parameters are recorded as part of the registration validation and moving to a different drive will be noticed in the validation.

The overall design of Windows does not well support portability.

That said, VirtualBox supports spoofing various hardware components, such as BIOS and hard drive nameplate data. This requires a little digging in the VirtualBox documentation. I do this with my Windows box. An important hardware element to spoof is the MAC address. When creating a VirtualBox machine, the software defaults to using an vendor-specific MAC address. Just modify that to the original hardware MAC address. For whatever reason with Windows the NIC MAC address carries more weight in the validation check. I have an article on my blog about the spoofing topic, but the article lacks nitty gritty technical details. Perhaps I should write an article.

Since you would be connecting the external drive to the same physical machine, you might not need to spoof much at all. Only the hard drive specs and MAC address will be different.

Before trying to use raw disk access on an external drive, try copying the Windows 7 partition to the external drive and then test that booting directly from the external drive succeeds without validation complaints. Possibly you will need to re-register, but only once. Before re-registering try various hardware spoofing options.

If your copy of Windows uses a System partition then that partition needs to be copied too.

Another method I have used is convert the entire drive to virtual. Something called P2V. A caveat with that is the size of the virtual hard drive file is the same as the original physical drive. Thus the new drive must be large enough to host a normal operating system as well as the virtual hard disk. While doable this option is not always practical. This is one reason why I like using raw disk access.