Only my second post, first request. Have tendency to lurk, but seen so much good advice on this forum, I would like to pop my head up. Many thanks. feel free to give me etiquette advice if i need it.
Sorry for the epic rambling post. I am not looking for anyone to solve all my problems for me, but any good advice at all from someone with more experience than me would be most appreciated. Anything, maybe just a general pointer.
I have used XP for years (know it), Kubuntu for 4 months (love it) & OS X Leopard for a week(others love it).
The recent addition of OS X has made me rethink my backup strategy. I need a new one & wanted to ask advice of some veterans. I have looked for a solution till my head hurt all week, didnt find it
My Setup:
eMachines desktop (1.8GHz, 384Mb)running XP & Kubuntu. IBM T42 (1.7Ghz, 500Mb)laptop running XP. 250Mb ntfs & fat32 external USB drive. Have recently aquired a Macbook Pro, Which I have setup to triple boot Kubuntu, XP & OS X Leopard using GRUB. It works (mostly) fine.
My Backup Stategy:
For years I used XP progs like windows backup, Nero Backitup & IBM Rescue & recovery: Until I tried to restore my OS, they all failed miserably.
Then I discovered Kubuntu (via Ubuntu). I found that I could use Partimage (via this forum) to backup all my partitions to my USB drive, even the MBR using dd, hurrah. This has saved my ass more than once, no XP reinstall.
Then I discovered Norton Ghost 2003, I got a disk free with Norton Antivirus(!). From the radified forums via the IBM website I discovered I could make a DOS boot cd from it & use it to back up all my partitions in a semi automated way. Even the hidden System Partition on my T42 (it is instead of an XP install disk). So when I upgrade my HD in my T42 I can use it with a IB switch to transfer all my data to the new drive, even the restore partition and boot track, avoiding XP reinstall. I could also backup a whole multi partition disk in one go, copying just the data & not the blank parts in compressed form.
My Problem:
Now I have multi-os multi partition disk in my laptop to backup. It has NTFS, HFS+ journaled & EXT3 partitions on it. The HFS+ one is the one that gives me the headache. I think that Kubuntu can mount HFS+, but I am unsure that if I backup this partition using Partimage to my NTFS of FAT32 external drive whether it will restore properly, or even for sure whether this is possible. I have found HFS+ to be a touchy & problematic format.
what I would like to do is dump the entire hard disk in my new laptop to my external hard drive. So I can mess around my laptop, having the option to restore the drive from my backup if need be. But I need to know that this method is reliable & will work.I would really like to carry on using Ghost 2003 DOS boot disk to dump the whole drive. It doesnt support HFS+ so probably not possible. looked into Ghost 11 (save & restore corporate) which supports GUID partitions but dont think this will be reliable, even possible. One thought I had is to do a whole disk dump in raw format, presumably to dvd. But then can I restore it to HFS+, dont see how. So now I reluctantly kiss goodbye to Ghost 2003.
my options:
this is as I see it, and I dont have much experience of Kubuntu, backups or OS X -so I might be completely off track. I have looked on the net, dont see any one package that can handle all 3 formats reliably.
I can handle backing up my desktop & T42 with my present strategy, as they are just contain just ext3 & ntfs, using ghost, partimage and dd. On the IBM thinkwiki someone says they dumped a whole drive using the cat command, no experience of this.
My problem comes from the triple boot laptop. I think my best option would appear to be Kubuntu, or Knoppix live CD might be better. I can then combinate Partimage to back up partitions separately to external USB (ntfs or fat32), also dd to dump the whole drive. I have only used this before to backup my MBR and am a bit nervous.
So does anyone have experience of backing up all 3 formats? Am I being too complicated about it, and over looking a more obvious solution? Will dd & Partimage reliably backup & restore from HFS+ to fat32 or ntfs?
Another option I am considering is to add an HFS+ partition to my external usb drive & then just use OS X Time Machine to back up the mac stuff. Back up the rest as separate partitions using ghost 2003 boot disc.
What really bothers me is that it all seems so messy, if I dont keep things under control I am going to end up with a backup collection that is a complete mess.
eg ghost partition backups, ghost drive images, dd mbr images, partimage partition images - all in either fat32 (spanned) or ntfs format and also an HFS+ partition that wont help me if I need to reinstall OS X, if I need OS X to restore it. I am getting quite short of storage space, enough for ghost images of all my drives, but if I follow this mess of a strategy I will need to delete a whole lot of data, or buy some more storage.
Sorry for the epic rambling post. I am not looking for anyone to solve all my problems for me, but any good advice at all from someone with more experience than me would be most appreciated. Anything, maybe just a general pointer.
I have used XP for years (know it), Kubuntu for 4 months (love it) & OS X Leopard for a week(others love it).
The recent addition of OS X has made me rethink my backup strategy. I need a new one & wanted to ask advice of some veterans. I have looked for a solution till my head hurt all week, didnt find it
My Setup:
eMachines desktop (1.8GHz, 384Mb)running XP & Kubuntu. IBM T42 (1.7Ghz, 500Mb)laptop running XP. 250Mb ntfs & fat32 external USB drive. Have recently aquired a Macbook Pro, Which I have setup to triple boot Kubuntu, XP & OS X Leopard using GRUB. It works (mostly) fine.
My Backup Stategy:
For years I used XP progs like windows backup, Nero Backitup & IBM Rescue & recovery: Until I tried to restore my OS, they all failed miserably.
Then I discovered Kubuntu (via Ubuntu). I found that I could use Partimage (via this forum) to backup all my partitions to my USB drive, even the MBR using dd, hurrah. This has saved my ass more than once, no XP reinstall.
Then I discovered Norton Ghost 2003, I got a disk free with Norton Antivirus(!). From the radified forums via the IBM website I discovered I could make a DOS boot cd from it & use it to back up all my partitions in a semi automated way. Even the hidden System Partition on my T42 (it is instead of an XP install disk). So when I upgrade my HD in my T42 I can use it with a IB switch to transfer all my data to the new drive, even the restore partition and boot track, avoiding XP reinstall. I could also backup a whole multi partition disk in one go, copying just the data & not the blank parts in compressed form.
My Problem:
Now I have multi-os multi partition disk in my laptop to backup. It has NTFS, HFS+ journaled & EXT3 partitions on it. The HFS+ one is the one that gives me the headache. I think that Kubuntu can mount HFS+, but I am unsure that if I backup this partition using Partimage to my NTFS of FAT32 external drive whether it will restore properly, or even for sure whether this is possible. I have found HFS+ to be a touchy & problematic format.
what I would like to do is dump the entire hard disk in my new laptop to my external hard drive. So I can mess around my laptop, having the option to restore the drive from my backup if need be. But I need to know that this method is reliable & will work.I would really like to carry on using Ghost 2003 DOS boot disk to dump the whole drive. It doesnt support HFS+ so probably not possible. looked into Ghost 11 (save & restore corporate) which supports GUID partitions but dont think this will be reliable, even possible. One thought I had is to do a whole disk dump in raw format, presumably to dvd. But then can I restore it to HFS+, dont see how. So now I reluctantly kiss goodbye to Ghost 2003.
my options:
this is as I see it, and I dont have much experience of Kubuntu, backups or OS X -so I might be completely off track. I have looked on the net, dont see any one package that can handle all 3 formats reliably.
I can handle backing up my desktop & T42 with my present strategy, as they are just contain just ext3 & ntfs, using ghost, partimage and dd. On the IBM thinkwiki someone says they dumped a whole drive using the cat command, no experience of this.
My problem comes from the triple boot laptop. I think my best option would appear to be Kubuntu, or Knoppix live CD might be better. I can then combinate Partimage to back up partitions separately to external USB (ntfs or fat32), also dd to dump the whole drive. I have only used this before to backup my MBR and am a bit nervous.
So does anyone have experience of backing up all 3 formats? Am I being too complicated about it, and over looking a more obvious solution? Will dd & Partimage reliably backup & restore from HFS+ to fat32 or ntfs?
Another option I am considering is to add an HFS+ partition to my external usb drive & then just use OS X Time Machine to back up the mac stuff. Back up the rest as separate partitions using ghost 2003 boot disc.
What really bothers me is that it all seems so messy, if I dont keep things under control I am going to end up with a backup collection that is a complete mess.
eg ghost partition backups, ghost drive images, dd mbr images, partimage partition images - all in either fat32 (spanned) or ntfs format and also an HFS+ partition that wont help me if I need to reinstall OS X, if I need OS X to restore it. I am getting quite short of storage space, enough for ghost images of all my drives, but if I follow this mess of a strategy I will need to delete a whole lot of data, or buy some more storage.
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