From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Mar 11 00:01:31 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 5202016A4CE for ; Fri, 11 Mar 2005 00:01:31 +0000 (GMT) Received: from ptb-relay02.plus.net (ptb-relay02.plus.net [212.159.14.213]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DC8CF43D48 for ; Fri, 11 Mar 2005 00:01:30 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from ian@codepad.net) Received: from [80.229.159.44] (helo=hercules.codepad.net) by ptb-relay02.plus.net with esmtp (Exim) id 1D9Xaq-000FFG-Gd for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Fri, 11 Mar 2005 00:01:28 +0000 From: Xian To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 00:01:26 +0000 User-Agent: KMail/1.7 References: <20050309171330.4c1c2ede.thib@mi.is> <20050309172646.GA19884@b210-12.cdf.toronto.edu> <422F3A1F.7050803@cloudview.com> In-Reply-To: <422F3A1F.7050803@cloudview.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200503110001.26402.ian@codepad.net> 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: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 00:01:31 -0000 On Wednesday 09 March 2005 18:02, John Pettitt wrote: > 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). I try to avoid taking machines of that age to bits, in case it is too much for them and they fail. Could you send the image across a network or something? > >> > >>Now my questions are: > >>1) When I dd the image back onto the disk: > >> What about the 'free' hd space ? Free space compresses very well when its all zeros > >> 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). I find that too big a number slows things down a bit. I use 128K with my USB drive, perhaps this is a point to start guessing from. I expect a bigger number will work better as a hard drive will be faster than USB. > > Make sure you use the raw disk device (/dev/adX) not a partition > (/dev/adXsY) so that you get the bootloader. > > > John > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to > "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" -- /Xian "Doing a job RIGHT the first time gets the job done. Doing the job WRONG fourteen times gives you job security" unknown author