Well I need to image my hard drive as a backup because I'm installing Linux on my Netbook, and I want to keep my HDD backed up because It has a ALT+F10 system factory restore function on boot up that I would like to keep. I tried using macrium reflect to do this inside windows, but I cannot save the image to the drive I want to image. I have a 8GB flash drive and thats it. Space is not a issue because it is a 250GB HDD.
[editline]3rd January 2012[/editline]
Could I use Gpart to make a logical partition and save the image onto that?
I was about to suggest partitions, but you beat me to it.
Yes you can, obviously making sure that the partition you're imaging is smaller than the partition you're leaving your image on.
You imaging with DD?
No, I'm imaging with some generic windows utility. I havent really worked with DD much to be honest with you.. Hopefully it images my bootloader fine so I retain that windows factory installation I'm looking to keep.
Also your alt+f10 on boot probably relies on a separate partition already, so check your partitions before wasting your time.
[editline]3rd January 2012[/editline]
With the likes of gparted, because that won't hide partitions like your windows install may.
My D257 comes with 3 partitions, 100MB "System" partition, 8.5GB PQSERVICE partition which I'm putting my money on as being the factory reset partition, and then my C:\ Windows partition which is 25GB. I figure its probably tied in with the Windows bootloader so I should back up the entire disk.
It looks like PQSERVICE is entirely self sufficient: the F10 message is part of the BIOS, not Acers custom Windows.
I think you'll be safe just leaving PQSERVICE as it is.
FYI the SYSTEM partition contains the windows bootloader.
You're probably right about it being tied to BIOS, if I hit ALT+F10 at the Acer boot screen it boots to PQSERVICE, and there is a D2D Recovery option in BIOS which is set to Enabled.
[editline]3rd January 2012[/editline]
Now the issue is, how to back it up.. because it probably formats the System partition, and the Windows data partition to recover back to factory defaults. I guess I would have to recreate those partitions if I ever wanted to reset back to factory defaults using PQSERVICE.
It's the PQSERVICE partition, I've had to deal with recovery partitions more than I'd like to admit in my internship.
I think this can create a backup of the entire disk on a sector level:
[url]http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html[/url]
I'm not sure about the compression, but defragging the disk first will probably make the backup smaller.
I know this can do it:
[url]http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm[/url]
bah, if I screw up I can always install Windows 7 starter from a USB key and use the provided drivers on Acer.ca's support site. I hope this thing is compatible hardware wise, the European/Middle Eastern versions have MeeGo linux on them.
Okay! Backing up my 36GB disk onto /dev/sda5, then I'm going to move it to my main PC with a network transfer over wifi(eek). After that I'm formatting and installing Linux!
[editline]3rd January 2012[/editline]
Brilliant! Apparently my CAT5E also functions as crossover cable, thought you needed reversed colour code CAT5 to do that. So long Wifi network transfers!
Newer NICs can automatically detect what kind of connection it needs to establish. Pretty nifty.
Turns out it Acer's recovery partition was tied to the MBR. Oh well.. time to delete PQSERVICE as its now useless.. good thing I backed my entire drive up onto my PC's HDD, and in a week once my new power supply arrives Ill put it on my secondary 500GB drive too.
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