On Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:14:19 +0000 "John ." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hello misc, > > I want to install OpenBSD/amd64 on my laptop (a recent Toshiba amd > turon with 3GB RAM) and ONLY have OpenBSD on it, but before I do this, > I need to know how I can image the disk and restore it subsequently. > It has vista on, and I may need to restore vista should I subsequently > need to sell the laptop at some future date. > > The hard disk was partitioned and formatted at the manufacturers. The > first primary partition is not visible as usable space - I think this > if from where the OS was prepped. > > Has anyone had this scenario, if so, what did you use to image the > data? Have you restored it since? > > thanks > My tool of choice for this is: dd Just dd the whole drive to a file, compress it and store it somewhere. Depending on how easy it is to rip out the harddrive and if you have another system around you can use for imaging that might be the fastest way. Otherwise you can image over the network or to an external medium. With usb-bootable systems i use a usbstick with openbsd to get a working enviroment. On older systems a knoppix cd still comes in handy. Over the network just redirect the output from dd over ssh. To restore the image just dd it back onto the drive. That's as simple as it gets and works also works for the "funny" partitions with the factory-restore stuff. To answer your last questions: Recently got a new Thinkpad, Vista license/media, XP preinstalled, no XP key/media, thought an image might come in handy sometime, imaged as described above, image-file is collecting dust scince then, don't really expect to restore it anytime soon. But an image produced this way can be restored and the system would be "working" the same way it was at the time you made the image. (If you only have a NTFS drive around to store the image, gparted+partimage would be another sollution.) - Robert
