[BBLISA] Win XP Backup software?

[Tom Metro]

BBLISa at nedharvey.com wrote:
> I am looking for a free alternative to Ghost, that handles NTFS.

I recently used SystemRescueCd (http://www.sysresccd.org/) to repair a
Windows XP machine. It includes Partimage, which is described as "a
Ghost/Drive-image clone for Linux," however I ended up not using it
because it only clones a specified partition to/from a file, not an
entire drive to another drive. So I ended up using good ol' dd.

You might also want to look at this from the Windows side of things, and
try BartPE (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/), which is a tool to create a
bootable live CD of Windows XP. I've used it, but it really provides a
minimal environment with no tools. The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows
(http://www.ubcd4win.com/) might be a better bet, as it builds upon
BartPE and bundles a pile of tools, including several drive imaging
tools, but I haven't tried it.


> ...incremental backups would be an awesome bonus.

Usually when you're talking about backing up entire partitions you forgo
the capability to work on the granularity of files, no?


Carl Alexander wrote:
> I have a Windows XP system that I want to swap disks in.  My one odd 
> requirement is I want to swap in a _smaller_ disk.

SystemRescueCd also includes QtParted, described as "a Partition Magic
clone for Linux," that uses NTFS Resize
(http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html) under the hood to
resize NTFS partitions. I used it to resize a full disk partition on a
160 GB disk down to a 130 GB disk, which on this particular system was
necessary in order to move the kernel under the 137 GB large block
addressing limit in the BIOS.

  -Tom