Full drive backup and P2V

[Mark H. Nichols]

Greetings All -

I've been dipping my toe in the Ubuntu pool via Wubi for several  
weeks now and I'm ready to abandon my XP setup and have just Ubuntu  
installed.

I would like to do two things to move from XP to Ubuntu.

First, I want to backup the entire drive.  Using dd or rsync can I  
make a full disk image of the drive (to an external USB backup  
device) that could some day in the future be restored if I wanted?   
In other words, would I be returned to the XP + Wubi setup I have  
now?  Would the command (dd or rsync or whatever) need to be run from  
a Live CD?

Second, I would like to do a physical-to-virtual conversion of my  
existing XP system, and once Ubuntu is up and running as the OS,  
bring XP back as a virtual OS when desired.  My hard drive is limited  
in size however, as it has an 80 GB capacity, and it currently holds  
70+ GB of data.  I don't have restore disks for this machine, nor do  
I have access to an XP CD, so virtualization is my only path to  
retaining XP for posterity.

Can I create the virtual image to a USB drive?  I am hoping that I  
can selectively virtualize the XP system - I really only want the OS  
and installed programs.  Any data will be backup and deleted prior to  
the virtualization, and would be re-introduced to the Ubuntu file  
system as needed or desired.


Mark
-- 
Nothing is impossible if you don't know what you are doing.


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