[Durham] Backing up and resorting a Windows7 install using Linux boot media

[Richard Mortimer]

Hi,

On 02/12/2013 16:18, Dougie Nisbet wrote:
> I have a failing disk in a Lenovo ThinkCentre A57. It has a WD 320GB
> drive.
How "failing" is the disk? It might be easier to resize before moving.

> I'm wondering whether I can boot the PC from Linux and backup the
> system using tar and restore to a different harddrive.
I don't think you will get away with tar/restore. You'll need to get all 
the NTFS ACLs and things like that - we'll I'd worry about not getting 
things like that anyway.

> Then try to boot
> the PC from the restored drive. All I can find is another WD but a 250GB
> one. What's my chances of success? Would a re-install be  easier? I
> thought of dd too but I'm guessing that the drives would have to be the
> same size.
If the disk isn't too failing then resize the partition on the old PC to 
say 230GB and then dd the image across. You might need to use ddrescue 
because that works around bad blocks reasonably well.

Once you've done that you will need to do a few clever steps to get the 
windows boot block and things like that hooked up again.

I did this once on my dad's XP laptop and managed to transfer the disk 
but I was going to a bigger non-failing disk so it was much easier!

Do you have any other system with a HD big enough to hold the 320G 
partition as an interim measure? It might be a good idea to take a 
"golden" of the drive just in case it fails completely or the transfer 
goes wrong.

Richard

>
> cheers
>
> Dougie
>
>
>
>
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