Ok CloneZilla while good for Grandma and other family members will not give me the solution I need. My Work HD is encrypted with PGPDesktop thus the boot sector itself is part of the key. While Clonezilla will allow me to "image" the HD it's not realistic since I will need a 180Gb image and it would be un-mountable. So I found this article that some may also find VERY interesting:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/create-a-virtual-machine-image-of-your-existing-hard-drive-windows/ So with a MS created tool you can make an image of a Windows system from the running system. This results in a vhd file ( Virtual Hard Disk image ) that VirtualBox 4.x Nativity supports. I seem to recall some posts about people wanting to "clone and save off there XP system and run Ubuntu but still have access to XP" this would be a very novel solution! I'll let you know if I can succeed in creating a 35Gb image ( only need the XP I had 2 partitions ) Joe Apuzzo GNu_Joe On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 1:29 PM, Luther Woodrum <[email protected]> wrote: > For a long time I have used tar to back up windows XP directories > and restore them from Linux. Until recently, this did not work with > NTFS partitions, but now it does. You can mount them rw in Linux, > and then they are the same as any other partitions. > > When installing ubuntu on a windows vista system on a second disk, > ubuntu asked me if I wanted to mount the ntfs partition rw, so I said yes. > > The reason I was installing ubuntu was because the user had gotten a virus > and it wouldn't start any more. > > Ubuntu imported all of his user files and directories, browser settings, > bookmarks, and all the other stuff, copying them onto the sdecond disk. > > Then finally, it said I had a windows partition already, and did I maybe > want to boot it too? I chose yes. > > Then, running ubuntu, I asked the user when the problem started, and I > looked for files whose dates were around that time. > > I found a bunch of files with AVG and variations in the name with the > offending range of dates. He said he had downloaded AVG a long time ago > for a free antivrus program. > > Well, the virus was so clever it replaced the real AVG files with its > own, so instead of starting the real avg on boot, it started the virus. > > It was a simple matter to locate all files names in the whole windows > system having avg somewhere and delete them all via rm from ubuntu > on the ntfs partition. > > Rebooting windows then came up normally, with no virus. > Of course, avg was gone. > > There seems to be no problem reading and writing files on a windows > filesystem any more. > > Lex > > _______________________________________________ > Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org > http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug > > Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium > Apr 6 - Introduction to IPv6 > May 4 - Inkscape > Jun 1 - Zimbra >
_______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Apr 6 - Introduction to IPv6 May 4 - Inkscape Jun 1 - Zimbra
