Now that I have installed winXP I think it’s time to back it up.
Summary
[Backup]
~$ sudo time dd if=/dev/hda1 ibs=4096 | bzip2 -v --fast | split -a 2 -b 1024m - winxpsp2.img-part-
[Verify backup files]
~$ md5sum /dev/hda1
~$ cat winxpsp2.img-part-* | bunzip2 | md5sum
[Restore]
~$ sudo time cat winxpsp2.img-part-* | bunzip2 | dd of=/dev/hda1
Detail
The dd command seems to be the way to go, but it backs up empty space as well, so I am using the compression tool bzip2 to ensure I don’t waste too much space. I’ll be storing the backup files on my network file server share.
First I’ll have to mount my file server shared directory:
~$ sudo mkdir /media/fileserver
~$ sudo mount -t smbfs //server01/shared /media/fileserver -o username=WindowsUserName,password=WindowsPassword
This command failed with the following error (grrr):
smbfs: mount_data version 1919251317 is not supported
After a quick google session I found that it means the smbfs package is not installed. I installed smbfs via: sudo apt-get install smbfs then executed this again:
~$ sudo mount -t smbfs //server01/shared /media/fileserver -o username=WindowsUserName,password=WindowsPassword
Now we are ready to backup not just the windows installation, but the entire partition that it is installed on.
The command to back up the partition is:
~$ sudo time dd if=/dev/hda1 ibs=4096 | bzip2 -v --fast | split -a 2 -b 1024m - winxpsp2.img-part-
Where sudo time dd if=/dev/hda1 ibs=4096 means:
| sudo |
Super user do. That is, do the following command as the root user. |
| time |
Report how long the commands took |
| dd |
Disk Dump (as far as I know) |
| if |
In file |
| /dev/hda1 |
A reference to the partition that has windows on it |
| ibs |
Input byte size. That is, read 4096 bytes at a time |
| |
|
The results of the above commands are then piped into the bzip2 compression tool where bzip2 -v --fast means:
| bzip2 |
Name of compression program |
| -v |
Do verbose logging (a bit pointless when piping – it really shouldn’t be there) |
| –fast |
Do fast compression. basically means it’s compressing smaller block sizes, which leads to sub-optimal compression. 7.5GB is still going to take about 2 hours on my AMD 2500+ CPU |
The output of the compression tool is then piped (yet again) to a tool called split that splits large files into smaller ones. It uses the following syntax split -a 2 -b 1024m - winxpsp2.img-part- where:
| split |
Name of splitting program |
| -a 2 |
The number indicates how many suffixes to use in the output file name. Say I split a large file into 3 pieces. I can use -a 1 to give me three files called filea, fileb and fileb. Using -a 2 would result in three files called fileaa, fileab and fileac. |
| -b 1024m |
Indicates the maximum size of each split output file – in this case 1024MB (1 gigabyte) |
| - winxpsp2.img-part-: |
The first dash means read from standard input (or piped input – same thing really). Usually you could put the name of a file to split. The ‘winxpsp2.img-part-‘ bit means to name each file winxpsp2.img-part- followed by the specified amount of suffices. In this case winxpsp2.img-part-aa, winxpsp2.img-part-ab, … winxpsp2.img-part-ah. |
Eventually I guess I’ll do something silly and trash Windows XP. If that is the case I should be able to restore it by:
~$ sudo time cat winxpsp2.img-part-* | bunzip2 | dd of=/dev/hda1
Tada! A brand new windows installation in mint condition.
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