[LUGSB] Re: Disk backup

Erez Zadok ezk at cs.sunysb.edu
Sun Aug 29 13:14:18 EDT 2004 

In message <Pine.SOC.4.60.0408291259080.21039 at sparky.ic.sunysb.edu>, Akshat Aranya writes:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> My laptop's power input is flaking out and I might need to send it in to 
> HP.  Sometimes I cannot even power it up.  Because they're going to wipe 
> my hard drive, I want to backup the entire drive.  Ideally, I'd like to 
> take the dump of the entire disk image so that I can restore it when the 
> laptop comes back.  What would be the best way to do so, assuming:
> 
> a) I can power up the laptop and boot into Linux
> b) I can't power it up at all
> 
> Also, it's a dual-boot system, so would a disk image backup/restore work 
> fine, i.e. will I get back to the original state without any problems?
> 
> Suggestions, anyone?
> 
> Thanks,
> Akshat

If they give you same drive, then you can take a DD image of the entire
drive now to restore it later.  This is the most flexible option b/c you can
use that dd image later on via vmware+losetup to boot, mount, and retrieve
any files you want.

Otherwise, you'd have to get f/s specific dump/restore files: on linux it's
easy -- use dump/restore; on windows it's harder, you can use ghost or
something like that.  (At least use winxp's user migration tool to backup
all of your local user accounts and their state/files).

This should be possible to do by booting the system from one of those linux
on a floppy or linux-on-a-cdrom (I have one at work) distros.

If you can't even power the laptop, you'd have to take the disk out and put
it in another machine/laptop.  Hopefully your machine used a standard
micro-ide adapter.

Erez.

PS. why do they have to wipe your disk if they're only going to fix the
power supply?

PPS. did you open it up to see if it's a simple case of a loose internal
connection (solder coming off can be fixed easily); or maybe your plug's
internal wiring is broken.
>From vinay at mnl.cs.sunysb.edu Sun Aug 29 13:21:41 2004
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Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 13:21:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: Vinay Pai <vinay at cs.sunysb.edu>
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In circumstance (b) put the hard drive into another laptop so that you 
have circumstance (a)

(Rather hard to back data off a powered down laptop)

then mount some adequately large NFS volume or Samba export or connect a 
USB/Firewire drive.  Do whatever it takes to have some external storage 
mounted, say, on /mnt.

then

dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/hda.img bs=1M



On Sun, 29 Aug 2004, Akshat Aranya wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> My laptop's power input is flaking out and I might need to send it in to HP. 
> Sometimes I cannot even power it up.  Because they're going to wipe my hard 
> drive, I want to backup the entire drive.  Ideally, I'd like to take the dump 
> of the entire disk image so that I can restore it when the laptop comes back. 
> What would be the best way to do so, assuming:
>
> a) I can power up the laptop and boot into Linux
> b) I can't power it up at all
>
> Also, it's a dual-boot system, so would a disk image backup/restore work 
> fine, i.e. will I get back to the original state without any problems?
>
> Suggestions, anyone?
>
> Thanks,
> Akshat
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> lugsb mailing list
> lugsb at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu
> http://www.fsl.cs.sunysb.edu/mailman/listinfo/lugsb
>
>From aaranya at ic.sunysb.edu Sun Aug 29 14:05:45 2004
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Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 14:05:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: Akshat Aranya <aaranya at ic.sunysb.edu>
To: Erez Zadok <ezk at cs.sunysb.edu>
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On Sun, 29 Aug 2004, Erez Zadok wrote:

> In message <Pine.SOC.4.60.0408291259080.21039 at sparky.ic.sunysb.edu>, Akshat Aranya writes:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> My laptop's power input is flaking out and I might need to send it in to
>> HP.  Sometimes I cannot even power it up.  Because they're going to wipe
>> my hard drive, I want to backup the entire drive.  Ideally, I'd like to
>> take the dump of the entire disk image so that I can restore it when the
>> laptop comes back.  What would be the best way to do so, assuming:
>>
>> a) I can power up the laptop and boot into Linux
>> b) I can't power it up at all
>>
>> Also, it's a dual-boot system, so would a disk image backup/restore work
>> fine, i.e. will I get back to the original state without any problems?
>>
>> Suggestions, anyone?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Akshat
>
> If they give you same drive, then you can take a DD image of the entire
> drive now to restore it later.  This is the most flexible option b/c you can
> use that dd image later on via vmware+losetup to boot, mount, and retrieve
> any files you want.
>
> Otherwise, you'd have to get f/s specific dump/restore files: on linux it's
> easy -- use dump/restore; on windows it's harder, you can use ghost or
> something like that.  (At least use winxp's user migration tool to backup
> all of your local user accounts and their state/files).
>
> This should be possible to do by booting the system from one of those linux
> on a floppy or linux-on-a-cdrom (I have one at work) distros.
>

DD seems to be the easiest option, but will I be able to boot/mount a 
dual-boot disk image in case the image doesn't work on restore?  I really 
don't care about the Windows data.  If I use dump+restore, then 
repartitioning the newly initialized disk to the exact same partition
sizes would be difficult.

> If you can't even power the laptop, you'd have to take the disk out and put
> it in another machine/laptop.  Hopefully your machine used a standard
> micro-ide adapter.
>

The laptop powers up some times, and doesn't at other times.  Hopefully I 
should be able to take the backup when it does come up.

>
> PS. why do they have to wipe your disk if they're only going to fix the
> power supply?
>

Knowing others' experience with HP, the first thing they do to your 
machine is wipe the contents using the HP restore disk. (You're-using 
Linux-that's-why-there's-an-ozone-hole)

> PPS. did you open it up to see if it's a simple case of a loose internal
> connection (solder coming off can be fixed easily); or maybe your plug's
> internal wiring is broken.

It seems to be more of an internal power circuit problem.  The power 
indicator glows orange and green at the same time, and sometimes the 
system will boot for five seconds and then die.  This occurs both with 
mains supply and on battery power.  It seems to come back to normal if I 
leave the laptop without the main power and no battery.  Maybe there's 
some capacitor that's not functioning right.  In any case, I don't want to 
open it and void the warranty.  Unfortunately, I have to wait for the 
problem to become more frequent before I can send it in, otherwise they'll 
just return it saying that they didn't find any problems.

-Akshat
>From vinay at mnl.cs.sunysb.edu Sun Aug 29 14:35:20 2004
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> DD seems to be the easiest option, but will I be able to boot/mount a 
> dual-boot disk image in case the image doesn't work on restore?  I really 
> don't care about the Windows data.  If I use dump+restore, then 
> repartitioning the newly initialized disk to the exact same partition
> sizes would be difficult.

AFAIK there is no easy way to mount an image of the whole disk.  You can 
maybe play some tricks with telling losetup to skip some bytes at the 
begining, manually override the total size etc. but its unnecessarily 
complicated and error prone

You can make per-partition copies instead if you want /dev/hdax instead of 
/dev/hda. Then you can easily mount it with the loop device if you need 
to. Just make sure you partition it in the exact same way when you restore 
it (make an image of the MBR)

> Knowing others' experience with HP, the first thing they do to your machine 
> is wipe the contents using the HP restore disk. (You're-using 
> Linux-that's-why-there's-an-ozone-hole)

Some people report that when dealing with tech support, asking to speak 
with their supervisor sometimes gets you a person who actually knows 
some of the stuff, isn't bound by a script and might even be aware that 
Linux is 100% CFC-free

Vinay

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