create an image like norton ghost in ubuntu

[H.S.]

Ray Parrish wrote:

> Here's one drawback that dd doesn't suffer from, this is a quote from 
> the partimage web site -
> 
>> *The NTFS (Windows NT File System) is currently not fully supported:* 
>> this means you will be able to save an NTFS partition if system files 
>> are not very fragmented, and if system files are not compressed. In 
>> this case, you will be able to save the partition into an image file, 
>> and you will be able to restore it after. If there is a problem when 
>> saving, an error message will be shown and you won't be able to 
>> continue. If you have successfully saved an NTFS NTFS partition, you 
>> shouldn't have problems as you restore it (except in the case of 
>> bugs). Then the best way is to try to save a partition to know if it 
>> is possible. If not, try to defragment it with diskeeper or another 
>> tool, and try to saving the partition again. 
> 
> Worth noting if you are a Windows user as well. Not a total deal killer, 
> but a potential annoyance.


Valid point. In fact, it is my practice so actually defragment Windows
partitions before I do any kind of imaging.

Now, regarding dd, I usually use a little hack of my own. In practice,
one usually wants to compress the dd'ed image using gzip or some such
thing. Before I do that, I use a little program I wrote to write binary
zeros to the partition till it is full and then delete the file (which
contains all those zeros). This way I am sure all deleted data is
zeroed, consequently resulting in better compression.



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