From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Dec 27 09:15:41 2003 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 0EA3E16A4CE for ; Sat, 27 Dec 2003 09:15:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from main.gmane.org (main.gmane.org [80.91.224.249]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3E34B43D53 for ; Sat, 27 Dec 2003 09:15:34 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from freebsd-questions@m.gmane.org) Received: from list by main.gmane.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1AaI2G-0003Ft-00 for ; Sat, 27 Dec 2003 18:15:32 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from sea.gmane.org ([80.91.224.252]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1AaI2F-0003Fl-00 for ; Sat, 27 Dec 2003 18:15:31 +0100 Received: from news by sea.gmane.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1AaI2F-0001Hk-00 for ; Sat, 27 Dec 2003 18:15:31 +0100 From: Jesse Guardiani Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 12:15:28 -0500 Organization: WingNET Lines: 53 Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org User-Agent: KNode/0.7.2 X-Mail-Copies-To: never Sender: news Subject: low level disk partition (NTFS) backup and restore X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: jesse@wingnet.net List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 17:15:41 -0000 Howdy list, I've got a slight problem that I'm not sure how to solve, but I'm fairly sure FreeBSD is capable of helping me solve. Here's the situation: I have an IBM Thinkpad A30p with a 40Gb HDD. This drive contains a 10 Gb NTFS partition holding Windows XP and a 30 Gb partition holding FreeBSD 5.2-RC1. Also, I have a desktop machine at home running Windows 98 SE on a 20 Gb hard disk. Now, as many of you know, Win 98 SE isn't a very nice Operating System. I'd _love_ to put FreeBSD on that computer, but unfortunately I can't. My wife is going to school and may need MS Office someday soon. And I own an external Backpack CDRW parallel drive that isn't support by FreeBSD (and Linux is out of the question). So, what I want to do is copy the 10 Gb NTFS partition from my laptop to the Win 98 SE computer's hard disk drive. I don't use Win XP on my laptop much, so I'll delete it once I can verify that it's successfully installed on the Win 98 SE machine. I've scoured the internet, and so far I can't find a way to do this from Windows (wow, big surprise). Win XP's "ntbackup" utility doesn't provide any way to restore on a non Win XP machine, AFAICT. Is there some way I can do this using tools like 'dd' and gzip? Here are the things I'd like to accomplish: 1.) Low level (including MBR, if possible) compressed copy of my NTFS partition to external USB 30 Gb hard drive. 2.) Boot FreeBSD Fixit media CDROM on Win 98 SE computer. Mount external USB drive containing compressed copy of NTFS partition. 3.) Decompress and write NTFS partition from external USB drive to Win 98 SE computer's hard disk drive. 4.) Run some kind of partitioning tool (BootItNG?) to make sure the (former) Win 98 SE machine's partition tables are correct. Does this sound do-able? What commands would I use to backup and restore the NTFS partition? Thanks! -- Jesse Guardiani, Systems Administrator WingNET Internet Services, P.O. Box 2605 // Cleveland, TN 37320-2605 423-559-LINK (v) 423-559-5145 (f) http://www.wingnet.net