DeviceImage Tools

[cgetty]

Hi
I’m not sure this is the right place to ask this question but here it goes.

I’m able to back up XP PCs with out any problems. Any idea how I can restore them. Talking about writing to the NTFS file system. I know that’s not a DeviceImage issue. I was just wonder if anyone has succeeded in doing this.

My goal is to learn to do as much of my computer repairs & maintenance using Linux. If I get this problem solved I think I’ll be able to do that.

Clark

[jurij]

Hi Clark,

I'm not sure I understand you well...
Are you thinking about a restoring of separate files from the image-file ?

Regards,
Jurij

[cgetty]

Hi Jurij

For this test I am trying to use DeviceImage to restore a PC running windows XP Pro.

I booted this PC up with a live Linux CD. Using a USB drive, I backed up the whole drive with zsplit. Everything backed up fine.

Now I want to restore the back up. I removed the hard drive that I backed up and put in a different (larger) empty drive. Then I wanted to boot up the PC with a live Linx CD and restore the back up using unzsplit.

On the empty drive I created the NTFS (using the live Linux CD) (type 86 for file type using cfdisk I think) partition it seem to restore ok. But the drive with the restored data would not reboot (also restored MBR). Then I pulled the hard drive out of the PC & put it in a USB enclosure. The reason for this was to try to view the restored data from my lap top through the USB. My lap top was running XP. My lap top was not able to view the restored data (now looking at it through the usb).

So then while the drive was still plugged in I reformatted it using Win XP.
Now I put the hard drive back into the PC again booted it up with the live Linux CD and found that I am not able to write to the NTFS.

New to linux. In the back recesses of my mind I remember reading about Linux & RW problems with NTFS.

I’m looking for a work around. I read somewhere today that someone suggested having a drive with two partitions on it a fat32 and a NTFS. Restoring the data to the fat32 partition then put the drive in a USB enclosure, plug the drive into an XP PC and copy the files from the 32fat to the NTFS partition.

That approach sounds a little Mickey Mouse to me. Hay If it works & it reliable I’ll give it a try.

Clark

[jurij]

Hi Clark,

If you are going to backup/restore the whole device and if your target (the device to be restored) is bigger then the original device, the simplest way to do this is the following:

Make a backup of whole device (suppose you wish to backup device hda):
zsplit -N some_meaningful_name -d /dev/had

The next step - restore this image to the bigger device, please notice: you should definitely know the device name of your new device which would the linux kernel assign to it. Suppose the new device also is recognized as hda.

The most important thing here to know that you definitely do not need to format your new device before rstore!

Simply plug it in, boot your system with Live CD, check under what name your new device has been recognized by the kernel (we still suppose that the name is hda…) and do the following:

unzsplit -D /dev/hda -d /path_to/some_meaningful_name

All information which is included in to a backup image (also the MBR, partition info, etc..) will be restored to your new device. And it should be bootable. The only thing here is, if the system begins to boot and then stops booting, you should run something like chkdsk to check the partition for its consistency.

I hope this info helps you,

Regards,
Jurij

[Guest]

The Hexcode of NTFS/HPFS is 07..and don't forget about the boot flag in cfdisk or so..in cfdisk i think key 'b' and in fdisk for linux it should be 'a'.