Backup ideas?

Joe josephj at main.nc.us
Tue Aug 27 15:50:05 EDT 2002


My laptop is a 233 MHz Pentium currently running Windoze 98se.  I recently crashed the hard disk and had to reinstall everything from scratch.  I don't want to do that again any time soon!  I've investigated all the backup options I can think of on the Windoze side and nothing seems adequate.  The problem is that I can't install an internal CDRW in this machine and Norton Ghost won't do an image dump/restore on an external device (and I don't have another computer to use over a network).

SO ...

I would like to make this a dual boot machine anyway with something like Mandrake or Red Hat.  If I do, is there some way I can buy an *external* CDRW and do a system image dump that can be restored?

Ideally, I'd like to be in a position where I could format my hard drive, stick in a floppy boot disk and automagically have it restore Linux and Windoze from the *external* CDRW just like nothing happened.  If that's asking too much, I could certainly do a minimal Linux install and run some utility from there.   Can this be done?  I know Linux can do a lot of things Windoze can't.  I'm not stuck on a CDRW if there's another reasonably priced device that would do it better, but a CDRW would be nice to have.

The tricky parts are that the CDRW has to be external and that Windoze likes to overwrite the MBR.  And of course, if I have to install Linux before I do the restore, it might get upset if the restore tried to overwrite the programs doing the restoring.

Machine details:  It's a Winbook XL 233 MHz Pentium with a CDROM and a 10 GB HD (8 GB available through the BIOS).  It has a 3COM Etherlink III PCMCIA card (3C589D) in it and an LT Winmodem (549 driver) built in that has to can be convinced to work.
The hard drive is currently partitioned roughly in half (C: & D:) with a total of about 5 GB free (not counting the unused 2 GB the BIOS can't see).

Any ideas would be appreciated.  If I can't think of anything else, I'll buy another laptop with a CDRW and an Ethernet card and use Ghost 2002 over the network to back it up.  I'd love an excuse to get a new computer, but I'd really rather not spend the money if I don't have to.

Thanks.

Joe
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