Image backup - a few questions - X-post

[David WE Roberts]

X-Post to uk.d-i-y because of the general knowledge there :-)

I feel the need to take an image backup of my Vista partition prior to tinkering. It is a long time since I did this. Computer is a Dell XPS M1530 laptop. Disc has already been through the wars with a corrupt partition table which was finally recovered.

So - firstly the disc layout is as follows taken from Disk Management:

133MB FAT (no label) Primary - no idea what this is for - Linux boot partition? 15GB NTFS (Recovery) Primary - 8.95GB free - presumably copy of the OS install media? 196.45GB (OS (C:)) System, Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition- 30.52GB free - Vista 9.5GB (no label) Primary - Linux Swap 74.5 GB (no label) Primary - Linux 2.5GB FAT32 (mediaDirect) Logical - Media Direct application/OS to allow PC to boot up into media server directly.

Now there seem to be too many Primary partitions but this could just be a limitation of Disk Manager under Vista. I would need to fire up Linux to check what it looks like from that OS.

I'm not bothered about securing the Linux bits as I use them rarely on this PC. I am certainly not bothered about the MediaDirect partition which doesn't seem compatible with Linux dual boot - when I tried to reinstall MediaDirect (complete with link to special button on keyboard) this trashed my partition table and I was lucky to get it back.

Presumably to enable me to recover to this disk (or another) I need to back up the first three partitions. Also presumably I can't do this with Vista running.

So what is the best (preferably free) tool to use for this? Can boot from CD or run from Linux (Ubuntu). Also, can this save the images in a filestore file or do I have to have a disc with unformatted space to copy the partition byte for byte? Oh, and if the FAT partition is Linux boot, can I mount it under Windows by assigning it a drive letter? I assume there is something marking it not to be mounted by Windows?

Any advice gratefully accepted.

Cheers

Dave R

[Andrew May]

I use Acronis TrueImage which makes it painless. You can backup up either a partition or a complete disk along with all the partition information.

I have also used Clonezilla which is free and open source and does something similar - but the UI isn't as polished.

Andrew

[Steve Firth]

Given that you have dd on the Linux partition you could use that.

[Rob Miller]

[Mentalguy2k8]

Yes.

I don't think you can back up the Vista partition from within Vista, you'd need to run the software or the CD and force the PC to boot/reboot into the software's boot mode first. Depending on the software you can back up the other (non-OS) partitions from your normal Vista desktop.

I know Acronis (mentioned below) saves the data as Acronis files on any normal disk. The advantage I found with Acronis (which may be present in other software) is you can view and extract individual files (like a photo or MP3) from a backup without having to restore the entire image.

Can't remember if Acronis has a partition table backup facility, but it's worth downloading a free one and making a copy of yours just to be safe.

Depending on what "tinkering" you have in mind, you may find that one of the Virtual Machine software packages might be more suitable. VMWare is free. It allows you to run a "copy" of your current OS (or any OS) and bugger about with it, without affecting your "real" OS.

[John Rumm]

Download the Maxblast ISO from seagate. That creates a self booting CD (based on Acronis True Image) that you can then use to clone to another drive or files on another file system / network drive etc.

(theoretically you need a seagate/maxtor drive in the system for it to work, but typing ALT+TO will circumvent the error it throws up)

[meow2222]

I used to use Total Uninstall with windows. Some versions are free, some not. If I had to go back to windows I wouldnt want to be without it.

That ability was crippled as far back as win98, and presumably earlier. Windows is such fun.

NT

[Bob Eager]

I use Paragon Hard Disk Manager, and that seems to do it fine. It uses VSS (the snapshot system).

[dennis]

If I had to go back to windows I wouldnt want to be without it.

Windows is such fun.

Windows can do full backups while it is being used, if you have software that understands the shadow copy service.

AFAIK this has been in since NT.

[polygonum]

If you call Windows Server 2003 a version of NT...

[David WE Roberts]

AIUI everything from Win2K onwards is a version of NT.

[polygonum]

Yes it is (and, of course, NT itself!) - but Dennis seemed to be saying that all versions of NT to way back when had shadow copy capability. Windows 200 did not.

[polygonum]

Windows 2000 is what my brain tried to type but my fingers refused.

[John Rumm]

Much as one might like to, you can't forget Win ME - that was still based on the 9x code base (although I can't remember whether that came out before or after Win2K)

[polygonum]

Have you never heard of 'repressed memory'? :-)

[dennis]

I think you will find it had it but it was normally disabled as win2000 was supposed to be the consumer branch following on from win98.

But I don't claim to be a windows historian.

[John Rumm]

No, Win2K was very firmly in the business camp. Windows Millennium Edition was the last version in the 9x code base franchise aimed at the home market.

WinXp was the first to integrate home and business lines.

[David WE Roberts]

ME was out at the same time as Win2K - as posted upstream ME was the consumer version and Win2K was the business version. I remeber because I got 2 PCs for my then business, one with 2K and the other with ME. Soon has 2K running on both. Allegedly the last release of Win2K was very close to XP (at least in the code base).

[John Rumm]

Yup I realise that, however since they were not released on exactly the same day, one must have pre-dated the other by a little bit.

(remember who my original comment above was posted in reply to - you have to expect some pedantry ;-) )

Most of the extra work in XP was on the compatibility for home and games software. There were a few others like integration of .zip files as pseudo folders, CD burning (by bundling Roxio libraries), support for hyperthreading processors, and some extra "shovelware".

[polygonum]

I was running a pre-release version of W2K some time before ME came out so in my head always get confused - did the release of ME occur before that of W2K? Or not?