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Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 14:10:42 -0500
From: Jerry <jerrymc@msu.edu>
To: FreeBSD Questions <questions@freebsd.org>
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Cc: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@msu.edu>
Subject: backup msdos slice
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Hi,

I hate to start this potential storm, but...

I have a machine with both an MS and FreeBSD slices on it.
I can easily back up and recover the FreeBSD slices using dump(8)/restore(8)
But, that won't work for the MS slice (which happens to be FAT32 on this
machine) because there is no superblock and inode structure.

So, what I would like is something that would dump the MS slice
to a FreeBSD file or media written in the FreeBSD world and that
I could then pick out files and directories somewhat like I do
using restore on a dump file.    I suspect that tar might not
keep enough meta information to be right for this job.  Is that
a valid concern?    Recovered files should still work in MS-Win.

Is there anything worthwhile out there that can do this and not
go through some the rigamarole that some MS backup systems seem
to want to put one through?

Basically, I want to back up the MSDOS slice (I know MS calls it
a primary partition) from the FreeBSD side of things.   I can read
and write the slice nicely from FreeBSD, but not dump/restore.

I would appreciate any suggestions. 

////jerry