MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - Re: Best way to clone and restore hard drive?

> > CloneVDI and the MS backup tool will only create a file the size of the data on
> your
> > drive that is not zeroed out. So you will want to use a util like sdelete first. If
> > you had a big file on there but deleted it at some point the data is still there
> but
> > the metadata to find it is gone. But from the POV of the clone tool there is data
> > there.
>
> That's not even true: the MS Backup tool will not copy unused blocks whether they're
> zeroed or not as it's NTFS-aware. Disk2vhd isn't the same thing as the MS Backup
> utility.

Hmm not my experience but maybe they fixed something recently.

>
> > I think one of the requirements of the MS backup tool is a separate drive.
>
> No, you can back up to any partition that you aren't making part of the backup.

Yeah that is what I said. You can not set the backup drive to the same one you are backing up. You can also only clone 1 drive. The rest can only be file backup. Unless I am missing some setting. Remember Home!=Ultimate when it comes to the backup util.

>
> > I have done the linux command cat a few times to compress the drive too. Something
> > like 'cat /dev/hdb > gzip -9 back.zip'
>
> The standard filename extension for gzip files is '.gz' and that command won't work
> at all. I think you meant something like 'gzip -c9 - < /dev/hdb > back.gz' but
> whatever you do, make sure you remount the partition read-only before trying that.
> Also you really shouldn't be telling people to do things you clearly don't understand
> yourself

Wow no shit... Perhaps I know what I am doing and you are just being a pedantic jerkoff? You *CLEARLY* did not read my 'something like'. But instead want to make assumptions. I am not going to tell him how to do something. He is going to *HAVE* to learn to do it himself and by readings the man pages. I am merely giving pointers and being *NICE* about it (but if you want me to be a pissy jackoff I can totally oblige). FORGIVE my computer faux pas of mistyping zip vs gz and missing one of the command parameters for something I use once every couple of years. Maybe I accidentally mistook this board for stackoverflow like you did?