Making image of harddrive

crxgames · 04-08-2005, 10:09 PM

What is a good free tool to make an image of my harddrive and allow me to restore it if my new install of windows messes it up?

My plan is to make the image of my harddrive with just SuSE on it, then install windows and fix the bootloader via rescue cd. So if my the XP install trashes my linux partition, I can just overwrite the harddrive with the image of how it was before I installed windows.

~Thanks

SciYro · 04-09-2005, 05:03 AM

"dd" or "dd-rescue" or "cp" or "cat" will work, you should compress the image also.

Code:

cat /dev/hda1 >> partition_image

that creates the image of partition 1 of the primary drive., but you really should compress it, unless you have that much spare space.

thecarpy · 04-11-2005, 07:13 AM

I did use dd with gzip

dd if=/dev/hda1 | gzip -9 > /image.gz

or in a shell script:

#!/bin/sh
date
printf "Creating image, please wait"
dd if=/dev/hda1 | gzip -9 > /image.gz
date
sleep 500