Re: [BackupPC-users] Windows bare metal restore

...Bob

On 11/29/2009 05:28 AM, Jeffrey J. Kosowsky wrote:

Bob Weber wrote at about 13:23:55 -0500 on Thursday, November 26, 2009:
 > I have cloned Windows systems (win 2k to XP) by using sysrescucd. 
What is sysrescucd?

 > First I would use ntfsresize to re-size the file system to the
 > smalist disk I would restore to.  This is not necessary if you will
 > always use the same disk size or larger.  Then I would copy the
 > first 100 megs or so (not really sure how much is necessary but
 > this amount allways worked) using dd.  If the destination disk was
 > a different size I would use fdisk to resize the c: partition to
 > the size of the new disk making sure the partition always started
 > at the same block as the original.  If the size is the same I would
 > use fdisk to write the the original partition table back so the
 > kernel would know the disk partition table changed (this saves a
 > reboot since the dd copy process copies a new partition table
 > also).  Next I would use ntfsclone to clone the whole ntfs file
 > system.  ntfsclone just copies the data and directory structure so
 > it is usually pretty fast.  If the disk is bigger than the original
 > I would use ntfsresize to resize the ntfs file system to the new
 > partition.
 > 

Not sure why you need to use 'dd' before ntfsclone. I thought that
ntfsclone was supposed to clone the entire ntfs filesystem at a low
level -- analogous to Norton Ghost.

If you are just trying to copy over the partition table then why not
just export that using something like 'sfdisk -d /dev/sdx'.

I tried to clone the disks this way by just making a partition table and then using ntfsclone and using fixmrb to restore the mbr. Windows wouldn't boot. I didn't go into a lot of trouble to see exactly what needed to be copied. Maybe the programmers at Norton have access to the internal workings of windows that us users don't have so they can program ghost to copy the appropriate data. Copying 50 to 100 megs of data was sufficient to fool windows into thinking it was on the same disk. The file after compression was only about 8 megs (from a 50 meg dd of the disk) and this is nothing space wise compared to the several gigs of data that ntfsclone would copy. I just assumed that windows stored a disk serial number or other data that it could use to assure itself that the installation it was running on was legal. The ntfsclone program probably overwrote data that was past the beginning of the C: partition but still in the first 50 megs of the disk. I just used the 50 megs number since I didn't want to have to calcilate the exact amount to copy up to the C: partition for each disk geometry. Also, sometimes there would be a "diagnostic" partition that was usually less then the amount I would copy so it was included in this "boot" image I would make.

The machines I was cloning are identical since we would purchase several classroom worth of computers at one time so the rest of the hardware would look the same to windows. So this method might not work if the hardware is not the same as in the case of buying a new replacement machine. It does work nicely in restoring a machine after a disk failure. I have done this several times at home when my wife's machine and my laptop had failed disks.

If you are trying to copy over the MBR, then you would just need to
use dd on the first 512 bytes (if memory servers me).

If I am mistaken, I would be interested in knowing what part of an NTFS is not
copyable by just using ntfsclone (and any sources for additional info
would be most helpful.)

ntfsclone apparently copies the entire file system correctly since I assume that it overwrote all file system data after the beginning of the C: partition that was copied from my dd boot image of the first 50 megs of the disk. I have used ntfsresize successfully many times to re-size ntfs file systems to new disk partition sizes and fdisk to resize partitions on destination disks that are larger than the image I was cloning from. So these programs know what they are doing when copying or modifying a ntfs file system or partition table. My "good enough for government work" way of solving the no boot problem seems awkward but it has worked for me. I mainly use Linux, so these tools have allowed me to clone and save images of Window system without having to use Windows and buy propriety programs. I use backuppc to daily backup the user data.

Thanks

 > This seems pretty complicated but I used a script to automate the 
 > process.  I used this at a local school system to create classroom 
 > images saved to Linux server that I could later use to populate all the 
 > computers in a class.   The 2 files for each image were compressed with 
 > gzip and transferred with ssh to and from the Linux server.  Check out 
 > the documentation that comes with ntfsclone to see examples.
 > 
 > ...Bob
 > 
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