Hi, I just got a bigger HDD for my laptop. I need to move the existing windows installation over the new drive. Is there a free utility which will allow me to make a partition copy (NTFS) to a network share, and restore from there? I can not plug both drives at the same time, so I need to copy the old one, and then to install the new one. All this is to make a free space for suse. I taught about running knoppix and dd, but I'm not sure that this will work. Thanks Sunny
On Thursday 09 June 2005 17:20, Sunny wrote:
Hi, I just got a bigger HDD for my laptop. I need to move the existing windows installation over the new drive.
Is there a free utility which will allow me to make a partition copy (NTFS) to a network share, and restore from there? I can not plug both drives at the same time, so I need to copy the old one, and then to install the new one.
All this is to make a free space for suse. I taught about running knoppix and dd, but I'm not sure that this will work.
dd will work just fine for you. You can dd the entire disk -- the old one -- to your network share and then dd it back to your new disk. Use dd with a 32k block size and it'll work fast as well. -- Christopher Shanahan
Thanks Sunny
On 6/9/05, Christopher Shanahan <cshanahan@comcast.net> wrote:
dd will work just fine for you. You can dd the entire disk -- the old one -- to your network share and then dd it back to your new disk. Use dd with a 32k block size and it'll work fast as well.
-- Christopher Shanahan
On the go. Will report back once I'm done. Thanks Sunny
Sunny wrote:
On 6/9/05, Christopher Shanahan <cshanahan@comcast.net> wrote:
dd will work just fine for you. You can dd the entire disk -- the old one -- to your network share and then dd it back to your new disk. Use dd with a 32k block size and it'll work fast as well.
-- Christopher Shanahan
On the go. Will report back once I'm done.
Thanks Sunny
If you use dd, the old partition and the new one will be the same size, that's fine if that's what you need. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce ... Hamradio License G3VBV, Keen licensed Private Pilot Retired IBM Mainframes and Sun Servers Tech Support Specialist Microsoft Windows Free Zone - Linux used for all Computing Tasks
On 6/9/05, Sid Boyce <sboyce@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
If you use dd, the old partition and the new one will be the same size, that's fine if that's what you need. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce ... Hamradio License G3VBV, Keen licensed Private Pilot
SuSE installer will :) Right now I only want my larger and faster drive up and running, and I do not want to spend like half a day reinstalling and patching xp ... and reboot reboot reboot :) Thnaks all you guys for the advises. dd is almost done, I'll report back after the restore :) Cheers Sunny
** Reply to message from Sunny <sloncho@gmail.com> on Thu, 09 Jun 2005 16:20:35 -0500
Is there a free utility which will allow me to make a partition copy (NTFS) to a network share, and restore from there? I can not plug both drives at the same time, so I need to copy the old one, and then to install the new one.
First let me say I know nothing about network shares, but I have backed up to a USB external and restored using the following: Assume that the partition is mounted at /mnt/NTFS and the network share is at /mnt/NETWORK cd to root /mnt/NTFS and do this find ./* -xdev | cpio -pdv /mnt/NETWORK. To restore reverse the process. "-xdev" and "-pdv" parameters are important, but I cannot remember why. See the man files for explanations of parameters for find and cpio. I must be missing at least one, because all file dates and times get set to those of the backup. No compression, so it does take a while to accomplish. Ed Harrison, Registered Linux User #199533 SuSE 9.3, Kernel 2.6.11 PolarBar Mailer 1.25a
Ed Harrison wrote:
Is there a free utility which will allow me to make a partition copy (NTFS) to a network share, and restore from there? I can not plug both drives at the same time, so I need to copy the old one, and then to install the new one.
Assume that the partition is mounted at /mnt/NTFS and the network share is at /mnt/NETWORK
cd to root /mnt/NTFS and do this
find ./* -xdev | cpio -pdv /mnt/NETWORK.
This is not a partition copy, it's a copy on based on file system. NTFS has some features find is not aware of, so I do not recommend this approach to copy a Windows installation. partimage is free and does support NTFS though that support is still labeled experimental and with some reservations. dd is able to exactly copy the partition with no problem. You won't be able to change the partition size on the fly, though. It is very reliable. Otherwise just use a trial version of acronis or ghost. Sandy
On Friday 10 June 2005 01:52, Sandy Drobic wrote:
partimage is free and does support NTFS though that support is still labeled experimental and with some reservations.
I have used partimage to save/restore NTFS (using a network server) and it went very well. But it was a freshly installed system. For NTFSes that "have been around" the experimental characteristic might apply :-) partimaged is daemon that starts a partimage server (no config required). Then boot with SUSE CD1 in rescue mode set up networking "ifconfig eth0 IP" mount a NFS export where you have partimage run partimage save partition or restore The partitions must be the same exact size.
On Thu, 2005-06-09 at 17:20, Sunny wrote:
Hi, I just got a bigger HDD for my laptop. I need to move the existing windows installation over the new drive.
Is there a free utility which will allow me to make a partition copy (NTFS) to a network share, and restore from there? I can not plug both drives at the same time, so I need to copy the old one, and then to install the new one.
All this is to make a free space for suse. I taught about running knoppix and dd, but I'm not sure that this will work.
Look for a copy of partimage, it will back the image over nfs and restore over nfs as well. Pay attention to the paths, and file names, you could trip over them. It's not the prettiest but it does the job. Mike
OK, here is the summary: I needed to replace the HDD of a non-linux laptop with a bigger one, without a need to reinstall everything. I had no working linux machine in place as well. My only possibility was to somehow backup the NTFS partition on a windows server. So, the staring point was obvious - Knoppix and samba share to a win box. Now, the first attempt was using just a plain: dd if=/dev/hda of=/myshare/myimage.img This failed! The number one reason is, that in order to use dd to write to remote machine, I needed to use smbmount. And there is a nasty limitation on the filesize - 2GB. After a lot of googling, the only thing I found was in some RedHat lists, and there they say that this is a problem with the smbmount on 2.4 kernels. Looks like this continues to be a problem, or at least I couldn't find a solution, as Knoppix 3.9 runs on 2.6 kernel. The second problem was that this copies the whole partition, with all empty space, which produces a lot of unnecessary traffic. I played a little bit with dd skip, etc in order to create smaller than 2GB files, but ... you know, 40GB hard drive will take 20 images ... boring and not right I guess. So, the solution was, as per Silviu Marin-Caea's and Mike McMullin's advice, I tried partimage. I did not used a server part for this. Just mounted the samba share, instructed partimage to create 2GB chunks, and of course to gzip the backup. After the partition backup, i did: dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr.img bs=512 count=1 to backup the MBR. Then inserted the new HDD, and restored the MBR with dd if=mbr.img of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 This as well restores the partition table. Now, the problem was that partimage failed to restore. It segfaulted using the user interface, and using the command line complained that the target partition is 0 size and can not continue. I rebooted the machine, and now everything worked fine. I would really like to know what I needed to do in order to refresh the partition table without rebooting, but I couldn't find any info about this. Anyway ... I'm done. Memtest from SuSE install DVD is running (I added a new memory), and tomorrow I'll be all set with a new lappy (I hope :) ) Cheers and thanks for all the help Sunny
On Tue, 2005-06-14 at 16:14, Sunny wrote:
OK, here is the summary:
{snip}
So, the solution was, as per Silviu Marin-Caea's and Mike McMullin's advice, I tried partimage. I did not used a server part for this. Just mounted the samba share, instructed partimage to create 2GB chunks, and of course to gzip the backup. After the partition backup, i did: dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr.img bs=512 count=1 to backup the MBR.
Then inserted the new HDD, and restored the MBR with dd if=mbr.img of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
This as well restores the partition table.
Now, the problem was that partimage failed to restore. It segfaulted using the user interface, and using the command line complained that the target partition is 0 size and can not continue. I rebooted the machine, and now everything worked fine. I would really like to know what I needed to do in order to refresh the partition table without rebooting, but I couldn't find any info about this.
I've never had this problem Sunny. My only problem has been with the MBR though, and I fixed it (WinME) using fdisk /mbr, after that windows was usable, and I think I used the tols on the install disk (9.1) to fix grub as the boot loader.
Anyway ... I'm done. Memtest from SuSE install DVD is running (I added a new memory), and tomorrow I'll be all set with a new lappy (I hope :) )
Cheers and thanks for all the help
Best of luck Mike
Am Dienstag, 14. Juni 2005 22:14 schrieb Sunny: [..]
Now, the problem was that partimage failed to restore. It segfaulted using the user interface, and using the command line complained that the target partition is 0 size and can not continue. I rebooted the machine, and now everything worked fine. I would really like to know what I needed to do in order to refresh the partition table without rebooting, but I couldn't find any info about this.
hdparm -z (man hdparm) greets Burkhard
On 6/16/05, Burkhard Carstens <suse-ml@onlinehome.de> wrote:
Am Dienstag, 14. Juni 2005 22:14 schrieb Sunny: [..]
Now, the problem was that partimage failed to restore. It segfaulted using the user interface, and using the command line complained that the target partition is 0 size and can not continue. I rebooted the machine, and now everything worked fine. I would really like to know what I needed to do in order to refresh the partition table without rebooting, but I couldn't find any info about this.
hdparm -z (man hdparm)
greets Burkhard
Nice to know, thanks Sunny
participants (9)
-
Burkhard Carstens -
Christopher Shanahan -
Ed Harrison -
Gary Gapinski -
Mike McMullin -
Sandy Drobic -
Sid Boyce -
Silviu Marin-Caea -
Sunny