[NTLUG:Discuss] Full system backup-restore for Desktop PC

[Ralph Green, Jr.]

Howdy,
  dd is what you would use to restore, too.  and since the drive is
smaller than a DVD, you can skip the compression.  That make the process
much faster.  dd is slower than Ghost because it transfers all sectors,
including empty one.  Ghost, just notices the empty ones and send counts
over.  But, dd is how I would do the job you describe.  The restore
would work pretty well because you could boot up with knoppix or toms
reboot and then restore straight from the DVD to her hard drive.  You
could also store her drive image on the network, but I like the DVD for
home usage like you describe.
  To be a little more complete here, to do the backup, you need some
free disk space.  This might mean you pull her hard drive out and plug
it in to your own system.  Or, you put a spare hard drive in her system
long enough to do the backup and then take it out.  That is because you
would need to write the image file out to a disk file before writing it
to a DVD.  If you only have a CD writer and not a DVD writer, then you
could compress it and it would probably fit.
Good luck,
Ralph

On Tue, 2005-06-28 at 01:37 -0500, Bradley's List Address wrote:
> only about 3 gigs on the drive. What would I use to restore from the DVD?