On Thursday 06 September 2001 21:04, you wrote:
>
> The point about zero-filling empty space becomes relevant if you are
> partition-saving (ie, raw device) and you want to compress the
> result as a file.
>
> Useful.
Agreed.
If you go at it that way, (say dd'ing the disk as one to a backup medium)
however, you do get around windoze filenames, but AFAIK you are unable to
restore it to a disk with different geometry (cyl/heads/sectors), or to a
cdrom as the FAT filesystem is geometry dependent. This effectively remakes
the fat filesystem, preserving all errors. It also seems a pity to preserve
the file fragmentation that occurs under windoze, and from other lists, I am
aware that linux and windows sometimes interpet disk geometry differently.
I wish you well with the endeavour, however I would try restoring to a
radically different disk before going too far (Ideally different access mode,
e.g. back up a disk under LBA and restore to a bigger one under CHS). This
caters for a crash, where the disk is replaced as a result - not uncommon.
Otherwise, when you REALLY need the backup, you won't have it :-(.
I was presuming that a backup would be simply of the files, allowing the
opsystem to recreate the valid directory structure on whatever medium it
found itself, and allowing (smaller) backups, without file fragmentation, and
restoreable in whole or in part anywhere. Dead space doesn't matter in that
instance. You're just left with thise dreadful windoze filenames to deal
with. And later versions of tar did fairly well with them, I thought.
--
Regards,
Declan Moriarty
Applied Researches - Ireland's Foremost Electronic Hardware Genius
A Slightly Serious(TM) Company
Success covers a multitude of blunders - G.B. Shaw.
>
> I have full backups of the main / /usr /boot (whatever) partitions
> of my last three workstation installs (redhat 6.2 onwards) as
> compressed bzip2 files on a cdrom. They fit, but only because the
> "empty space" is compressed so much. (Of course, such backups must
> be copies onto partitions that were exactly the same size as what
> they were copied from).
>
> Same deal for partition backups onto tape... backing up such
> partitions with hardware compression enabled results in big space
> savings.
>
> All the best...
>
> Cheers
> Tony
> ---*#*=-=*#*=-=*#*=-=*#*=-=*#*=-=*#*=---
> Tony Nugent <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> LinuxWorks - Gold Coast Qld
