Full drive backup and P2V

[user1]

On Tue, 2008-12-09 at 22:12 -0600, Mark H. Nichols wrote:
> 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?
> 

I suggest you to backup each partition to your external harddisk.

I use puppy as live cd, as I find it easy to use.

You can download a puppy iso image from here.

http://www.puppylinux.org/downloads/official-releases

I would use puppy linux 4.1.1

You could also use a systemrescuecd

http://www.sysresccd.org/Download

The partition like "/dev/sda1" should not be mounted, but the external
harddisk should be mounted.

Here are an example of a partition (/dev/sda1):

dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/mnt/sdb1/imagename.img (backup)

dd if=/mnt/sdb1/imagename.img of=/dev/sda1 (restore)


> 
> 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.
> 
> 
> 
>