making an image of my harddrive

[bignester]

I want to install a different distro on my laptop to see if it works better than the current install that I have. So I want to back up my current install so if this next install doesn't work I can go back to my other install.

I have a network with a drive on the network that can hold everything I just need to know a procedure that can do this. should I just tar everything over the network. I was thinking that I coulde do this install the new system and if I want to go back I can use knoppox or some oter live distro to get everything back. Run lilo to reinstall the bootloader. Am I correct in assuming I can do this.

thanx for reading

bignester

[Snide]

Yes you can do this.

Symantec ghost can do this from a boot floppy I believe. you can also use tools that come with linux, but you will have to research how to do this. A simple search & google.com/linux for hard drive image produced the following...

# dd if=/dev/hda | gzip > /mnt/hdb1/system_drive_backup.img.gz

To reverse:

# gzip -dc /mnt/hdb1/system_drive_backup.img.gz | dd of=/dev/hda

Backing up MBR:

# dd if=/dev/hda of=/root/hda.boot.mbr bs=512 count=1

Restoring MBR:

# dd if=/mnt/hda1/root/hda.boot.mbr of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

http://<br /> http://wiki.linuxques...e_backup_image

Of course you can mount your samba server or NFS server to store these files & use a live CD to restore them.

[Flatline]

And if you want a linux-native way of doing it with a gui, you could also look into partimage.

[winter]

partiamge also supports file based image mode as well as plain raw based(file mode=smaller files). Partimage as some network capabilities.

[scm]

If you're doing disc copies with dd, I'd suggest using a BIG bs= value (like 1024M) to minimise the effects of latency.

[borromini]

Guys, just a question out of curiosity... Is dd also gonna work with Reiser4 partitions or is it file system-independent?

[winter]

Guys, just a question out of curiosity... Is dd also gonna work with Reiser4 partitions or is it file system-independent?

as far as im aware dd if is pritty much a raw mode dump so yes

[scm]

That's right, dd just reads bytes from a device and writes bytes to a device.

[bigtomrodney]

Isn't ReiserFS supported in Ghost now? I knkow it wasn't before so it treated empty space as used, and was not efficient for ReiserFS. After all, an 80GB image that could have been 8GB....That partimage looks good. Anyone used it?

[winter]

use it at work for the 2k and xp clients, and it works with ntfs no problem for me as a client restore or as a image based install deployment tool. Also i think it can be used in conjuction with grub for a network booting (looking in to network booting grub at the moment).