From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 9 18:02:09 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A41BB16A4CE for ; Wed, 9 Mar 2005 18:02:09 +0000 (GMT) Received: from skipjack.no-such-agency.net (skipjack.no-such-agency.net [64.142.114.146]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E973D43D3F for ; Wed, 9 Mar 2005 18:02:08 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jpp@cloudview.com) Received: from skipjack.no-such-agency.net (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by skipjack.no-such-agency.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5B95834D456; Wed, 9 Mar 2005 10:02:08 -0800 (PST) Received: from [192.168.2.120] (blackhole.no-such-agency.net [64.142.103.196]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by skipjack.no-such-agency.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 12B4334D453; Wed, 9 Mar 2005 10:02:08 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <422F3A1F.7050803@cloudview.com> Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 10:02:07 -0800 From: John Pettitt Organization: CloudView Photographic User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (Windows/20041206) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: james.cook@utoronto.ca References: <20050309171330.4c1c2ede.thib@mi.is> <20050309172646.GA19884@b210-12.cdf.toronto.edu> In-Reply-To: <20050309172646.GA19884@b210-12.cdf.toronto.edu> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.90.1.1 X-Enigmail-Supports: pgp-inline, pgp-mime X-AV-Checked: by skipjack Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.1 cc: "Thordur I. Bjornsson" cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Backup of hd using DD. X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 18:02:09 -0000 james.cook@utoronto.ca wrote: >On Wed, Mar 09, 2005 at 05:13:30PM +0000, Thordur I. Bjornsson wrote: > > >>Hello list. >> >>I had an idea about using a tool similar to dd(1) take backup's of >>entire disks. >> >>Here's my situation: >>My father has an old PII running Win98 (Don't ask don't tell... he's >>using very old financial software ;). Needless to say the thing keeps >>getting borked and reinstall of his entire setup is quite frustrating. >> >>Now I was wondering if I could simply set the thing up with all the >>programs that he needs + drivers + anti viral &c but minus the financial >>software ofcourse and the rip the disk out of the machine put in my >>workstation make an image of it and keep it safe and when the machine >>goes borked I could simply rip the disk out again put it in my machine >>and dd the image back onto the disk and restoring the "good-image" setup >>(then I would restore his financial stuff with the most recent backup >>(wich he keeps on a zip disk). >> >>Now my questions are: >>1) When I dd the image back onto the disk: >> What about the 'free' hd space ? >> What about the bootloader for Win98 ? >> The registry &c ... ? >> >> > >The bootloader, registry and all that are on the hard disk, so if you make an >image of the whole thing it'll all be preserved. The only thing I can think >of that you won't be backing up is your BIOS configuration, but that's >probably OK. > >As for free space... if you've got an 80GB hard disk and you image the whole >disk, you'll get an 80GB image, no matter how much free space was on it. If >you want a more efficient way of doing things, I suppose you could put the >"base system" on a separate small slice, and just backup that slice... >but then you have to be careful to include the bootloader as well, which might >not be stored inside any slice. > > If you zero the disk before you do the initial install of Win 98 (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/(disk to zero) then all the freespace will be zero blocks which will compress really well. > > >>2) How do I make an image of the entire disk using dd(1) ? >> Or should I use some other software ? >> >> > >dd if=/dev/{disk to backup} of=/path/to/new/image/file > >where {disk to backup} is something like /dev/ad0 (for full disk) or >/dev/ad0s1 for slice 1, and /path/to/new/image/file is where you want to put >the image. > >Use the option "bs={some big number}" to dd to make it a faster (man dd for >more info). > > Make sure you use the raw disk device (/dev/adX) not a partition (/dev/adXsY) so that you get the bootloader. John