Perhaps I missed something in reading this, or my interpretation of a 'bare
metal restore' is different from yours.
My definition of 'bare metal restore' is taking essentially an image of the
current disk, copying it to some media, and then using that image to do a
bit-by-bit (sector-by-sector, track-by-track) copy from the backup medium to
the target medium. For me, the bit by bit copy is primary for the OS, and
possibly including the application programs (word, ppoint, etc.) I don't
buy into the M$ organization of files and disks. I partition my hd for OS,
Applications, and User Data. I baremetal restore the OS partition and
usually the Application partition using Acronis True Image. (True Image is
more or less functionally equivalent to Norton Ghost-the enterprise version,
not the butched commercial version they have sold in stores since V9 (I
think)). I store the images on a NAS that is backed up.
I do restores in one of two ways: Use the restore CD that Acronis allows you
to make-bareboot the machine, the pull the image from a server, or, netboot
the machine, and using an image loader, pull the restore image from the
server and put it on the HD.
Once the target machine is capable of booting the newly restored image, you
can run backup pc (which I gave up on some time ago) or whatever your
favorite backup program is, and copy the backed up user data area to the
target HD.
In your writeup, you talk about reinstalling windows just to get a working
copy of the OS "if anything’s installed or working, you’re going to wipe it
all out anyway" so why essentially do the install twice?
Your method does allow for the most recent (more or less) snapshot of most
of the relevant windoz files but doing an image every so often would
essentially do the same thing. In many cases, it may actually be better to
install a clean load image of the OS and apps, rather than restore something
that may be corrupted/virus infected. In systems where I have this concern,
I have an image of a clean xp + backup program restore that I use. It is all
done over the net, minimal (if any) manual intervention at the target
machine. If need be, I can also remove the target HD, connect it to the
NAS, then copy the image directly via the SATA/IDE interface, then put the
disk back in the target machine.
Sorry, but I don't see how this method is a baremetal restore with a manual
step in installing windoz. Your still screwing around with loading via CD a
copy of XP, and then cgwin, and then 'manually copying' files in the XP
subdirectories. Seems like a lot of places for things to fall through the
cracks with file contents not being 'in synch' and I also wonder about
registry consistency and backup.
It may, however, work fine in your environment.
-J
On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 1:08 AM, Michael Stowe
<mst...@chicago.us.mensa.org>wrote:
>
> Out of necessity, I had an opportunity to try out restoring a system from
> scratch with nothing but BackupPC backups. I'm happy to report that the
> process works, with a few limitations and quirks.
>
> I've documented it here:
>
> http://www.goodjobsucking.com/?p=219
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download Intel® Parallel Studio Eval
Try the new software tools for yourself. Speed compiling, find bugs
proactively, and fine-tune applications for parallel performance.
See why Intel Parallel Studio got high marks during beta.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-sw-dev
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