[ale] Window Chopping

[John Mills]

Nathan, all -

Thanks for all your suggestions for capturing a disk image of the WinXP 
installation on my new laptop.

On Wed, 25 May 2005, Nathan J. Underwood wrote:

> I realize I'm a bit late on this one, but I've had very good luck with 
> partimage.

I'll look into 'partimage'.

I gave the problem a bit more thought and decided a disk image is not what
I need.

The laptop now has WinXPHome on its 40 GBy HDD. The drive is formatted 
NTFS. I was planning to install Linux right away, probably destroying the 
WinXP installation, and wanted a way to restore WinXP in case of need 
(i.e., if I had a warranty claim - or wanted to return the unit.)

Now I have passed the return period and see uses for its WinXP over the
rest of the 90-day warranty. I am still interested in a WinXP file backup
(not a disk image), so I can reinstall it after I repartition with 'fat32' 
for WinXP and 'ext3' for Linux. That's an easier proposition.

There are some 3.5 GBy in use on the disk, so a file backup would be a lot 
handier than a disk image of 3.5 GBy live data an 36 GBy dead space!

Thanks again.


> 
> Mills, John M. wrote:
> 
> >Brian -
> >
> >Thanks. If I had the materials I would probably go with Ghost, but this
> >looks like a good approach to say the least.  I did something similar with
> >knoppix and cpio to capture a moderate amount of data (c. 1GBy) from a
> >laptop with a corrupted Win32 setup (I know: "How can you tell?"). In that
> >case I expanded the files at the receiving end and wrote them onto
> >Win-readable CDs. Here I have about 3 Gby, so I'll need to think about my
> >target. Naturally burning to a DVD would be ideal. 
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Brian MacLeod [mailto:nym.bnm at gmail.com] 
> >Sent: Friday, May 13, 2005 1:44 PM
> >
> >BML> Please took a nice gander at this:
> >BML> http://sentinelsecurity.net/whitepapers/diskcloning.pdf
> >
> >BML> The second to last page is in dead tree format on my desk, as it is a
> >BML> nice quick reference.  Please note, though, that if you do not tune
> >BML> the block size (basically, do it as he wrote it), it may take a while
> >BML> to store this image.  But it is reliable.  We use this method with
> >BML> difficult laptops/tablets and KNOPPIX cds (if we can get the tablets
> >BML> to boot from external CD)
> >
> >BML> bnm
> >
> >
> >On 5/13/05, Mills, John M. <Mills.J at ems-t.com> wrote:
> >  
> >
> >>My Questions: I may wish to reinstall WinXPHome some day. What is the best
> >>way to capture the as-yet unused installation for another system or later
> >>installation? Should I be able to repartition my HDD back to WinXP if I
> >>    
> >>
> >need
> >  
> >
> >>to (presumably with the recovery CDs)? How about the MBR?
> >>    
> >>
> >
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-- 
 - John Mills
   john.m.mills at alum.mit.edu