[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 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.
How about compression? Isn't the empty space zeroed?
> 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=$AMOUNT_OF_DATA_IN_MB
>count=1
dd if=/dev/hda1 | gzip -9 > /file/on/_mounted_/winpartition
> and then write it to CD and restore it after a 'format c:' under DOS (or
> mkfs.dos /dev/hda1, I'm not sure if it supports FAT32 thoug) with
>
> dd -if=/dev/cdrom -of=/dev/hda1 -bs=$AMOUNT_OF_DATA_IN_MB count=1
dd if=/dev/cdrom | gunzip > /dev/hda1
> 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?
Unmount your partition before you dump it.
--
David Nicol 816.235.1187
A government of the p8a, by the p8a, and for the p8a.
