Back/Restore Windows partition with DSl and 'dd'

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: Back/Restore Windows partition with DSl and 'dd'
started by: rothmail

Posted by rothmail on Mar. 31 2007,06:15

I have DSL running happy on an old laptop. I sometimes still need access to Windows 98SE on this laptop, so I create a partition /dev/hda1 for Windows. DSL is installed on /dev/hda2 and its swap on /dev/hda3.

As if often the case with Windows, the common way to fix it when it has problems is to wipe out the drive (or partition) and re-install Windows. This is very time consuming plus many patches have to be located and installed too.

Since Windows 98SE isn't taking up that much space (600-700 MB) I was wondering if I could backup the /dev/hda1 partition that it resides to either a flash drive or the DSL partition while booted under DSL. This way in the event I need to restore Windows 98SE, I could just restore this backed up partition?

I have looked into G4U and it has problems that it doesn't support the PCMCIA Network card in this laptop, or any way to use ndiswrapper that we enjoy with DSL to make the wireless card work either.

So the big question is, can 'dd' be used to backup/restore a Windows 98SE /dev/hda1 partition running under DSL?

Here is a wiki I found on 'dd' for those interested:
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_%28Unix%29 >

What I would really like to be able to do, is store the Windows 98SE as an iso image on CD-ROM. Then boot DSL from hard disk (/dev/hda2) and with the Windows 98SE iso image CD-ROM in the drive, issue a 'dd' command to restore the /dev/hda1 partition.

Of course, I don't know if this will mess up GRUB or not even if this works, since now I am presented with DSL options and "WINDOWS" to boot from. Anyone have experience doing this? Thanks!

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Mar. 31 2007,06:22

If you only target hda1 it should be fine, as your grub most likely won't be affected (on hda's mbr)

You can use another dd instance if you wish to back up your bootloader though.

Posted by curaga on Mar. 31 2007,15:01

Yep, it's possible and also maybe easy.

DD'ing the partition won't make an iso, iso has its own filesystem, but it does make an image, which can be applied back easily. Just remember to format that 98 partition to clean it just before restoring that image..

In case you need help, here are those commands (For a HD install, not frugal):
To backup:

Quote

sudo dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/win98 bs=1k

If you want, just burn it to a cd as a normal file.
Restoring that, assuming that your cd is /dev/hdc and mounted:

Quote

sudo dd if=/mnt/hdc/win98 of=/dev/hda1 bs=1k

If you wish to format FAT32 from Linux, get dosfstools from MyDSL.

And that will not mess with Grub..