** Reply to message from Karl Cunningham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:37:54 -0700
here is what I did to image a bunch of computers really fast and it could be used to do what you want as far as having a back up goes. Install VMware player on your desktop( Windows or Linux ) download and run the pba-backup applicance in VMware. Use a browser to get the ISO bootable image from the PBA-backup appiance burn a bootable CD with that boot the laptop/computer you want to backup with the bootable CD and back it up repartition install Linux if all is well, make another backup of this new disk setup if something goes wrong, restore the original disk image using PBA-backup CDROM I used this both here and for installing default images on identical computers being refurbed for donations. I did one install of Ubuntu, customized it and then backed it up. This took about 45 minutes. I then connected another identical computer up to the network, booted from the restore CD and installed the image on it in less than 5 minutes. Besides that mechanism, I might do the 2 disk shuffle but instead of dealing with the rescue image and reinstalling Windows, I'd use the 2nd disk as the backup location for ntfsclone and just put a compressed backup image on that disk. If something goes wrong, restore from that image. I have verified ntfsclone works. Here is all of what I did: I backed up the unbooted partition booted into it it and messed around blew it away restored it booted into it and saw the same welcome crap and initial config stuff blew it away again and now use it for Linux stuff after sucking it into a virtual machine image. So, here's a clip from my restore script: echo Ready to Restore hda1 sudo ntfsclone --restore-image --overwrite /dev/hda1 /mnt/ntfsBackup.img #or for remote restore: #cat xp.img | ssh $remotehost ?(ntfsclone ?restore-image ?overwrite /dev/hda1 - )? Doug -- KPLUG-List@kernel-panic.org http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
