I am looking into a _general_ solution to backing up Win systems to CDs
from tomsrtbt. The solution discussed in list archive (tarring the vfat
files into archive / copying directly to CD) seems not to be sufficient,
as it may break some programs that do rely on system/hidden attributes
(not that I can think of an example, but in theory these could exist) etc.
And, besides, in NTFS this solution wouldn't work.
Now, if it would be a question of backig up the entire partition, it would
be simple with dd, but in Win boxes usually one partition covers the
entire disk. But if only 200MB of a 20GB partition is used there is no
idea in backing up all the empty space.
In theory it should be possible to defragment the Win filesystem, thus
creating a consistent chunk of data in the beginning of the partition and
dd only this chunk into an image file:
dd -if=/dev/hda1 -of=/file/on/_mounted_/winpartition -bs=$AMOUNT_OF_DATA_IN_MB count=1
and then write it to CD and restore it after a 'format c:' under DOS (or
mkfs.dos /dev/hda1, I'm not sure if it supports FAT32 thoug) with
dd -if=/dev/cdrom -of=/dev/hda1 -bs=$AMOUNT_OF_DATA_IN_MB count=1
Problems:
- is there an utility for determining the last used block on a vfat fs?
- juggling with mounted/unmounted partition: is it safe/possible to
consequently raw read from a partition and write to it?
- is it possible to create the outfile on the mounted winpartition to a
specific disk location/vfat fs block (for retaining a big enough gap
between the reading area and the writing area)?
This would enable to transfer data between partitions after repartitiong
as an additional benefit btw -- you could break the big 20GB partition
into, say, 10GB bits and dd the beginning (of the 20 GB) back into the
first one. Though fips is better suited for the job, it still is an issue.
Regards,
Mart S�mermaa
