backing windows via gentoo / and restoring

Farkenell · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 05 Dec 2003 Posts: 88

Could I backup a whole windows partition into a tarball and restore it via gentoo (overwriting etc)...without stuffing up the bootloader?

Insanity5902 · Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 3:43 am Post subject:

what do you mean stuffing up the bootloader ... if you mean you just want they data from the windows partition and not partition info etc

you could just mount it as read-only and then copy everythin recursively into a bz2 file. All of windows boot info are stored into files so they would be copied over. If you wanted to keep the partiation table also you could use the dd command.
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Farkenell · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 05 Dec 2003 Posts: 88

Ok, thanks...I just needed confirmation

...(before I go and try this out)

PowerFactor · Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 4:16 am Post subject:

Couple problems with that approach.

If you're using ntfs tar will not save the file permissions. And you'll have no way to restore the files form linux unless you're using the captive ntfs driver.

And whether you're running ntfs or fat, win9x or NT/2k/xp the bootsector will not be restored by that method. You'll have to run "fixboot" from the recovery console for 2k/xp or "sys c:" from a bootdisk for win9x.

You can back up and restore any windows partiton with dd.

n3mo · Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 7:26 am Post subject:

Yesterday I found this, and I think it will be intersting for you:www.feyrer.de/g4u/

massctrl · Apprentice Joined: 19 Mar 2004 Posts: 156

Yes i can confirm n3mo's post!!

G4U is a wonderfull piece of software and is in my top5 most precious software! I use it all the time and back up my boxes regularly using this. For example, if my Gentoo laptop gets screwed up of too much experimenting then i boot up with G4U connect to the ftp and restore a recent image,
This way it's reinstalled in a blink!

Don't forget to read the FAQ of g4u there is a lot of "must read" info in it

Insanity5902 · Posted: Wed Sep 08, 2004 12:06 pm Post subject:

Power Factor -- correct about the file permissions and bootsectore, taring the mounted drive will not grap the bootsector, That is what I meant by the partition info, I couldn't think of the word. But to extract that information, What I do is install a fresh windows, make a folder on the root of C:\ or if you have partition it so on D:\ and untar it there. WinRar can reqongize and untar just about any linux format. You won't have the file permissions, but when you get it copy the files over, they will get them from there parent directory.

That g4u looks pretty cool.
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