Linux-based disk imaging idea for Linux/Windows

Jerry Feldman gaf at gaf.ne.mediaone.net
Tue Jul 24 06:48:46 EDT 2001


There are several stand-alone Linux floppies. However, you can take most 
distros, begin an install. Once the installer comes up, they usially have 
virtual terminals set up.
The dd utility can be used to copy an entire partition. cp or dd can also 
be used to copy a bootable diskette to an image:
dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/home/username/floppy.img

I think you may have some difficulty with ntfs. DOS and VFAT should not be 
a problem.
I backup my Windows partitions with tar, and have restored them with tar. 
Since a restored Windows partion is not bootable, you must boot a DOS 
floppy and run the sys command. I've done that on Windows95, 98 and 98SE.
Scott Ehrlich wrote:
> Hello to all:
> 
> I had an idea for a disk imaging program which could be free and work
> pretty well - use a Linux boot floppy with DOS/NTFS support and cp and/or
> zip included to boot a machine, mount the hard drive, establish a network
> share to a destination host, and run cp or zip (for compression) for a bit
> copy of the hard drive to the destination.
> 
> Of course there would have to be limited support for NIC and possibly SCSI
> cards.
> 
> If driver support became more expansive, there could be an ISO CD version
> for systems supporting CD-ROM based booting.
> 
> Any takers for this project (or does it already exist?) :-)
> 
> Scott
> 
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-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org


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