Hello, My main computer have now two drives: one SSD for system (openSUSE 13.2) and the original Hard drive 1Tb, for Windows 7 system and data. This computer is now 4 years old and I would like to have a replacement hard drive at hand in case the old one break. I already have the drive (same size). I have backup for all the data. I don't really mind to backup the linux systems I still have on this old disk (too old), so the main problem is backing up windows to get a bootable result. Of course I don't want to use any windows utility, not boot windows if not obliged to :-). I just keep windows because I need it sometime. the partition table is like this: /dev/sda1 2048 206847 204800 100M 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda2 206848 629360441 629153594 300G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda3 * 629360640 1926973439 1297612800 618,8G f W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/sda4 1926973440 1953521663 26548224 12,7G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT (only linux partition after that) The cloning tools (clonezilla, redo backup) needs booting a live cd, so making the computer unusable for the backup time, and redo is from 2012 (http://redobackup.org/), so I'm unsure if it works with windows 7. I guess I will have to use dd, but I know it for being dauntingly slow and wonder if there is not a best way. I found that sfdisk -d /dev/sdX | sfdisk /dev/sdY could copy the partition table to the new disk. Then I could use rsync? But will this copy the file system?? if not (I guess not), will mkfs.ntfs and mkfs.vfat make usable systems for partitions 1, 2 and 4? will the resulting disk be bootable on windows? I have also questions about booting windows and license updating, but it's probably not the good place. do you have any experience on this? If I need to use dd, what are the best options for speed? thanks jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org