how to make a hd image
 

Hi there!

I have my system setup pretty nice right now but I want to install Xgl. However, the last time I tried this I totally goofed up my system and had to re-install.

Is there a way to easily backup the entire drive, so I have a quick and infallable way of returning to my previous state.

cheers!

If you have a second harddrive (whether internal or USB/Firewire) big enough to hold the contents of the linux installation then you can do the following. Use a boot CD like System Rescue CD from here http://freshmeat.net/projects/systemrescuecd/ , burn the image and boot from it. In it there is a tool called partimage. This can make copys of a partition or the entire drive (best to do and entire drive) (also works best to have a second harddrive installed on the IDE channel to do this). You cannot run this app from the distro installed on your harddrive because the partitions need to be unmounted to be imaged.

If you clone the drive which is the best way then pull your orginal drive and make the second hardrive the master. Boot from it and play.

Brian1

Yes, there are two simple ways:

1 - tar the system: tar -cjvf mydebian.tar.bz2 /
2 - use partimage, which makes an image of the filesystem. Neat tool with curses interface. Only problem is you can only restore the image into a filesystem which is at least as big as the original filesystem. If you have a 5G Debian partition but you're only using 3G and you make a partimage; and then you want to restore the image to a 4G partition, you can't do it with partimage. You can do it with tar.

(Check my syntax on tar, this is how I remember it but I might be wrong.)

thanks for your help - i'm going for the System Rescue CD

:-)

that worked a treat! I now have a nice image of a working system.

I didn't need it though this time - i've now got Xgl running! yahoo!!

g4u
 

miner -

for future reference, g4u is a GREAT app for imaging disk-to-disk, part-to-part, and also disk-to-ftp and part-to-ftp.

Download g4u ISO image, burn, reboot system.

It detects NIC, WiFi, USB, etc... I usually use it with customers HD's and image to an external USB HD.

Scott