VOGONS

Options to automate backing up and restoring a single partition that is part of a complex layout

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First post, by Kahenraz

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I'm doing a lot of tests on Windows 9x that require me to install service packs, KB updates, patches, and other things in an effort to try and isolate a problem. When I find that it doesn't fix my problem or makes the system unstable, I want to quickly revert to a base "know good" configuration that is guaranteed not to have anything leftover. What I have been doing is booting into Windows XP, then backing up or restoring the entire contents of the drive.

This is fine. And it works. But are there any other tools that are available to me that would make this process better, easier, or more convenient? I've never used anything like Norton Ghost, which I've heard about often over the years.

My partition layout is already configured to boot into a primary DOS partition where GRUB4DOS lives. So there is some opportunity there to log in and run a bat file to perform backups and restores, if something like that is feasible.

Reply 1 of 1, by DosFreak

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I tend to use virtual machines or emulators like pcem first for testing before implementation on physical hardware since it makes testing much easier. Snapshots or just shutting it down and making a copy of the hard drive image.
For physical hardware I either use imaging programs like Ghost or Acronis or Clonezilla if your hardware supports it or I just copy the windows folder to another folder.
Instead of just a full image each time you could then have a base image and then a differential for wherever you are at in your testing.

I want to say that grub can load .VHD files so possibly may be useful but not sure if it's worth the complication or not for this. If you did do so then you could make copies of the .VHD as a backup which may or may not take alot of time depending on how slow your system is and the size of the .vhd.

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