Noobish Question about Backing up a Partition

humbert

For linux, say you use something like this:

tar -cvpzf root.tar.gz --exclude=/root.tar.gz --exclude=/proc --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/sys --exclude=/mnt --exclude=/media --exclude=/dev /

then do

tar -cvpzf boot.tar.gz / boot/

for the boot partition (assuming it's different)


or for Windows (from linux):

tar -cvpzf windows.tar.gz /mnt/windows/

Then, if you use dd to backup the first sector of your disk to save the boot code and partition table.

Is that enough to restore either partition reliably?

I should do some reading on the stages in loading the OS using grub but do you have to worry about the the first sector of the OS/boot partition in Windows linux?

Galen

Download the Clonezilla distro http://clonezilla.org/ or the Parted Magic distro which includes Clonezilla http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=start Clonezilla is the fastest Partition imaging tool out there and best of all it's free. Works with windoze and linux partitions without any difficulties and you don't need to use the command line. Quick and easy.

human 19

Copy of my post (its easier) on an other forum. I use this all the time,even before updating Sabayon. The size of the saved file depends on the amount of data on the partition, not the size of the partition itself.My sabayon back-us come to ca. 8.5 MB and take about 10 mins max to save.

...so I used fsarchiver with the GUI qt4-fsarchiver via Linux Mint ( because fsarchiver was in their repo ,and there are .deb packages available from http://qt4-fsarchiver.sourceforge.net) and made a copy of the Sabayon partition to an external disk.

It is an extremely easy way to back up partitions and the files can be reloaded to a different partition, even on a totally new revamp of the computer.

So after DBANning the disk and popping in a live CD (Debian derivative again so I could install fsarchiver+GUI again) , set up the new partitions , opened qt4-fsarchive and restored Sabayon to its designated partition.

human 19

This qt4-fsarchiver really is an excellent partition back-up tool.

I recently gave up trying to run Windows in a VM due to netflix quality issues so decided to migrate a primary partition distro to the extended partition and install windows on a primary.


I simply saved the disto from sda3 and then remounted it on sda 11. 20 minutes total approx. No problems whatsoever. The object partition does not have to be the same size or bigger than the original. Just needs to be big enough to contain all the data on the original.

The file can be saved on any mounted partition and restored from there also (most partitions are mounted automatically)

I have qt4-fsarchiver installed on my Multisystem USB stick and run it from there. Multisystem differs from Unetbootin in that it can contain various distros which can be opened via a Grub list

I also use it to back up my distros before updating. This came in VERY handy after catalyst stopped supporting my Radeon HD4350 card, so I was able to make a few attempts to move to the open source driver

The password for qt4-fsarchiver is "ubuntu", btw.
It also contains packages like GParted.

humbert

Thanks for the suggestions. They are both very capable packages.

It's not so much contrariness that motivated the question, but there are times when it's very handy to know how to do stuff like that with tools available on every system.

It seems that NTFS does have a boot sector with an IPL(initial program loader) so I assume Windows would fail to boot without that. Unfortunately it also contains information about the MFT so I don't think you could simply copy it over to a new partition.

A gziped disk image would do in a pinch, I suppose.