okay first of all i apologize for putting up another dd question since there is a really wonderful thread already available at linuxquestions.org at
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=362506
however before i tried something i just wanted to be sure if that would work or not.
So here is what i want to do:
I have a toshiba machine with 60 GB hard disk . The partitions are are follows:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 1341 10771551 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 1342 7296 47833537+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 1342 3253 15358108+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 3254 6204 23703876 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7 6205 6982 6249253+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 6983 7113 1052226 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda9 7114 7296 1469916 83 Linux
Now i wish to take the back of my hard disk so that if i loose data i can quickly restore it.
i know i can use dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/myexternaldrive/backup bs=4k
to take the back up.
My questions is it possible that after words i restore for example only /dev/sda1 (NTFS with the boot loader lilo).??/
if i can do that , then how would i access /dev/sda1 for restoring (i can mount the backup but how to access the partitions inside it????
Another thing i keep comming across with dd is that "hard disk should be exactly the same".. Does it mean i cannot backup my 60GB internal hardisk to my external 320GB hardisk??
And lastly, is the dd command present in linux LiveCD's like ubuntu or knoppix etc, since i would need to boot the system (and mount my external drive )before i can actually restore it?
Also, would i need to make partitions on the disk before restoring or would that be taken care of itself since i guess partition table would also be restored from the backup???
hmmm that turns out to be more than just one question but i hope you ppl dont mind..
Thnx