another "tar" question - backup XP

Mick Mearns off_by_1 at yahoo.com
Thu Aug 5 01:06:01 UTC 2004


--- "Doncho N. Gunchev" <mr700 at globalnet.bg> wrote:
>     I do not know such, but I can give you an idea: mount your fat
> partition,
> create a file with zeroes to take all the free space on that it,
> umount the
> partition and compress and backup the whole partition. I assume you
> have your
> XP on /dev/hda2, so:
> 
> [root at fedora ~]# mkdir /mnt/c
> [root at fedora ~]# mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/c
> [root at fedora ~]# cd /mnt/c
> [root at fedora /mnt/c]# cat /dev/zero > ZEROFILE
> cat: write error: No space left on device
> [root at fedora /mnt/c]# rm -f ZEROFILE
> [root at fedora /mnt/c]# cd
> [root at fedora ~]# umount /mnt/c
> [root at fedora ~]# sync
> [root at fedora ~]# dd if=/dev/hda2 | bzip2 -vv -9 > /mnt/home/hda1.bz2
> # ( or 'dd if=/dev/hda2 | gzip -9 > hda1.gz' )
> 
>     Then backup /mnt/home/hda1.bz2 where you want. You need the
> 'ZEROFILE'
> in order to full the unused partition space with zeroes, which will
> be
> compressed very much (128MB zeroes | bzip2 -9 > 112 bytes). When you
> need
> to restore your XP just do 'bzcat hda1.gz > /dev/hda2'. All files and
> permissions (this trick can be done a bit harder with any fs) will be
> 1:1.
> 
> !!! WARNING !!!
>     1. You should restore to the same partition (size).
>     2. Any mistake like /dev/hda1 instead of /dev/hda2 will totally
> destroy
> /dev/hda1.
>     3. This does not take care of the MBR. You might need to recover
> it with the XP's rescue mode -> manual -> restore boot sector.
> !!! WARNING !!!
> 
>     Hope this helps :)
>     PS: I used such trick to 'clone' some machines with same hardware
> and
> disks.
> 
> -- 
> Regards,
>   Doncho N. Gunchev    Registered Linux User #291323 at

Hello;
  thank you very much.
I now have a large file, I cannot test it untill I have to re-install
XP.

Mick M.

=====
Dogs have Masters - Siamese Cats have Staff!


		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail





More information about the fedora-list mailing list