[Gllug] Another dd backup ignoramus question

M.Blackmore mblackmore at oxlug.org
Wed May 7 21:26:12 UTC 2008


I've recently got a second hand Fujitsu P4 3ghz for my wife (she was
complaining about how slow her 700mhz computer was nowadays...) and
whilst not exactly state of the art this will certainly be an
improvement and more than her needs by some margin even if it is a few
years old!

However, true to form, no installation CDs and no install partition on
the hdd, but a bare Fujitsu-tuned install of XP SP2 on it. We're going
to shrink that down to about 5gb (or whatever size will fit onto a dvd)
just in case its ever needed, and I was wondering if dd would simply run
off an exact copy of this to a dvd burner? Does dd do any compression or
do I have to shrink its partition down to dvd size ... and err, how big
is a single sided dvd anyway for data type storage <blush>

For reinstallation in the future, does the disk that it is being
reinstalled to have to be exactly the same size as the one it was copied
off - or will a bigger disk work just as well (say running it off onto a
10gb partition or even a 20gb partition if my daughter prevails upon my
wife to let her install Sims2 and Simcities Societies on her
work-from-home computer)? And will it install all the boot sector stuff
as well so the disk will boot or do I have to do that seperately?

Finally, having probably booted up XP less than a dozen times in my life
so I know nowt, where and how do I turn off or disable the swap file (or
whatever it is called in microserf land) 'cos I seem to remember John
was having some problems shrinking a windows partition 'cos of a ruddy
great lump of immovable filespace bang in the middle of the whole disk,
which people reckoned was the disk cache memory swap space wotever it
was called.

Many thanks
Malcolm
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