> On 12/07/12 01:13, Michael Stowe wrote:
>> The short answer is that for a bare metal restore, I first install
>> a stock OS, then use BackupPC_tarCreate, restore everything to a
>> directory, then use the recovery console to rotate it into place.
>> After a reboot, everything's back, including the registry.
>
> Could you clarify a couple of points please?
> What do you mean by a "stock OS"? Is that the same version of windows
> that was backed up, and installed up to what point? In the past I only
> went up to the first reboot from windows, or do you go past that? Do
> you also do all windows updates?

Yes, the same version of Windows that was backed up -- just to the first
reboot -- there's no point in applying updates, since they're recovered
from the restore.

> Do you think the restore could be done from within a Linux machine
> instead of using the recovery console to rotate it into place? I'm
> assuming this step is just a "move \windows \windows.old" and a "move
> \restore \windows"? Do you restore that windows directory while booted
> into the "stock OS"?

It's possible -- though Windows can be very quirky about booting, which is
why I installed it first.  I haven't *tried* it, but I suppose a LiveCD
which can mount NTFS read-write could do the job.

And yes, though the sets of directories (in addition to "windows") that
need to be pivoted include Program Files, Documents and Settings, etc.  To
make things simple, I just did the move with every directory that the
stock OS created.

>> Naturally, I do lose ACLs and whatnot, but aside from a few tweaks,
>> the process at least works.  I've been considering adding a
>> supplemental ACL backup to the routine.
>
> That sounds like a useful idea, but really, what are the ACL's used
> for? Is that just additional end-user type of customisation where you
> might specify only user X can access folder X, and folder Y is world
> read but write by group Z etc... ? ie, is that just a security issue,
> or does it prevent the actual OS or applications from working?

In practice, the only issue I had were the "hidden" and "system"
attributes being missing from desktop.ini files.  Aside from being ugly,
this caused the OS to launch an editor for them on boot (which seems odd
to me.)



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