Backup ideas?

Robert Dege rdege at cse.Buffalo.EDU
Tue Aug 27 16:51:08 EDT 2002


Well, I haven't had real experience at doing Windows restores, but
theoretically, you can tar the partition (bzip2 for good compression), &
burn the tar to the Ext. CD-RW.

Just be sure to grab the boot sector.  With windows you can sys c:
a: & save the floppy with CD-Rom.  Then just reverse the procedure to
restore the boot sector after your restore.  Or from a Linux point, you
can dd if=/dev/hda of=/win98.boot bs=512 count=1.

Hey, at least it "sounds" feasible :)

-Rob

> 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
>



Dege

So Many Things in Life Would Be Really Funny
.... If They Weren't Happening To Me




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