-
How do I backup/restore XP using Knoppix?
Hi:
Having just spent a week restoring Windows XP on my laptop, I have come to Knoppix.net to learn how to be able to do it better next time (without any help from Microsoft who will have stopped supporting XP by then). I have lots of old software that I fear may not run under W7 so I want to keep this old laptop going for ever.
Can I describe what I think I need to do and maybe someone out there can tell me if I have it right, or if it won't work and there's a better way.
My plan is to buy a USB drive big enough to take the entire C: drive (hda2), make an NTFS partition on it (sda1) which is big enough to take it (I can do that in Windows I think), then reboot into Knoppix, mount the two drives and do the command:
dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/mnt/sda1
If I have understand correctly, that will give me a byte-for-byte clone of the C: drive on the USB drive. Back in Windows I should be able to read/restore individual files from this. If (when?) Windows crashes, I should be able to boot into the Knoppix CD and mount sda1 and then ....
At this point I am not sure what to do about mounting hda2. The plan is to execute the "dd" command again but with if=/dev/sda1 and of=/mnt/hda2 but I can't figure out if hda2 needs to be formatted first, and if so, how. The dd command is doing a byte-for-byte copy so it shouldn't need to know how to write in the NTFS environment, but I can't figure out whether I need to format the partition first, and if so, whether it even matters what type of filing system I choose for the formatting.
The thing that worries me is that I have been told that operating systems other than Windows may have difficulty writing to NTFS partitions (because NTFS is poorly documented?). If I have got it right, using "dd" for the backup AND for the restore gets round this. If I need to restore XP and the hard disk is corrupt, I am not sure I know how to proceed if Knoppix must format the Windows partition as an NTFS filesystem and this is not easy.
Maybe some of you reading this can tell me if I am worrying too much. Is all this written-down somewhere?
Thanks
Peter
Posting Permissions
- You may not post new threads
- You may not post replies
- You may not post attachments
- You may not edit your posts
-
Forum Rules
IBM Power S822 8284-22A 12SFF Power8 3.89GHz 6Core 64GB RAM No HDD Server System
$359.99
IBM Power S822 12-Bay Server System Power8 Core 3.42Ghz DVD-Rom Drive 64GB No HD
$349.99
1U IBM x3550 M5 4 Bay SFF SAS3 Server 2x E5-2683 V3 28 Core 128GB DDR4 2x Tray
$318.00
IBM 9402 Server Y10
$7000.00
IBM Power8 S822L 20-Core 3.42GHz 256Gb 1.2Tb 40G Elastic Storage Server 5148-22L
$599.95
IBM System x3550 M3 Dual Intel Xeon X5650 @2.67GHz 32GB RAM No HDD
$84.50
IBM Server eServer | IBMR1000 | UPS 1000VA 700W -Without Batteries
$115.00
43W4342 IBM SERVER RAID MR10M SAS/SATA BATTERY PACK W7-3(5)
$17.97
IBM System p5 9131-52A 3.5" 4-Bay Server 80P6787 1 CPU 2GB 6 HD CADDIES TAPE BU
$275.00
IBM X3850 M2 4U Rack Server BOOTS 4x Xeon MP 2.93Ghz Hot Swap 32GB RAM NO HDDs
$279.99