How do I backup/restore XP using Knoppix?

[OErjan]

first do NOT use ntfs, use the linux format ext3,
positive, it can be reliably read and written from Linux and is capable of storing huge single files.
downside, to read ext3 from windows you will have to use one of these or something similar.
http://www.howtoforge.com/access-lin...s-from-windows
http://www.fs-driver.org/
http://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/

also to avoid problems I would clone WHOLE disk, not just first partition, reason is that
mbr, partiton-table, bootloader... will then be copied, that you loose if you only copy C:\,
as result and your restored copy of windows will not boot.
another thing, be 100% certain what you are doing as to disk names and partition numbers when using dd, no way to revert if you dd a blank disk over a xp install, that is what will happen if you swap sda and hda for if= and of= (if= is input and of= is output).

first an important thing!

before removing any USB plug, powercord... make sure you sync (write everything
from RAM to actual image) and Umount the disk (no I did not misspell unmout, command is actually called umount).
first shut down filemanagers... that you have been using on /dev/sda1 then do the command below

sudo sync&&sudo sync&&sudo umount /mnt/backup

if you unplug it without this something WILL go wrong and it may not even be obvious from the start

to make a "clone" of the drive make certain you can access the drive sda1 under /mnt/sda1 by mounting it there

sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1

then to make the actual image do this simple command in a xterm, konsole, aterm... (many names fro same thing) window

sudo dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/sda1/XP-backup2011-01-23.img

if you want to access separate files from windows I have NO real idea how (for Linux I will show below).
one possible avenue is using what is above to read the ext3 filesystem + another tool
I have heard that you can buy/download something called isobuster to use DVD images...
instead of DVD's when gaming, no idea if it will work though.

here you have another option, using a packaging tool (gzip) together with dd to reduce file size,
downside is that the above tools will likely not be able to read it.

sudo dd if=/dev/hda | gzip -9 > /mnt/sda1/XP-backup2011-01-23.gz

for the above to be 100% effective and you get minimal file size you should zero the disk before partitioning the disk and installing windows...

WARNING the command below will WIPE the disk clean beyond many recovery tools /WARNING.

dd if/dev/zero of=/dev/hda

WARNING the command above will WIPE the disk clean beyond most recovery tools /WARNING.

to restore normal image just type

sudo dd if=/mnt/sda1/XP-backup2011-01-23.img of=/dev/hda

and for gzipped image do

gzip -dc /mnt/sda1/XP-backup2011-01-23.gz | dd of=/dev/hda

depending on system (usb1.0, usb1,1, usb2... ata33, ata66...) and disk size...
this can take looooong time before completing both making the image and restoring it,
longest yet was 27 hours for a 40G hdd...
normal is few hours, and on plus side you do not need to stand there waiting.

now to read unzipped image in Linux do

sudo su

to become root
then create a directory to mount the image to

 mkdir /mnt/backup

now mount it

mount -t ntfs-3g /mnt/sda1/XP-backup2011-01-23.img /mnt/backup -o loop -ro

now you can see the content in the directory /mnt/backup,
before removing any USB plug, powercord... make sure you sync and Umount the disk as before

sync&&sync&&umount /mnt/backup

the