Dude, I'm getting a Dell!

It's gonna come with Vista, and I have to use it that way for work.
But I want to
put a Linux partition on there. So I need to repartition.

Having learned to be cautious, I'm wondering if there is a good open-source way
to back up about 300GB of NTFS such that I can restore fairly smoothly. It has
to be fairly fast, so file-by-file copies are probably going to suck.
I'll have 100MB
ethernet to a big-enough drive.

Then, I'm wondering about partitioning tools. I can use
PartitionMagic 7.0. I've heard
of gparted, but not used it. Any advice?

TIA

++ kevin


--
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

Am Dienstag, 23. Dezember 2008 07:39:17 schrieb Kevin O'Gorman:
> Dude, I'm getting a Dell!
>
> It's gonna come with Vista, and I have to use it that way for work.
> But I want to
> put a Linux partition on there. So I need to repartition.
>
> Having learned to be cautious, I'm wondering if there is a good open-source
> way to back up about 300GB of NTFS such that I can restore fairly smoothly.
> It has to be fairly fast, so file-by-file copies are probably going to
> suck. I'll have 100MB
> ethernet to a big-enough drive.

You may try bacula, it has a Windows client. rsnapshot may also work, see the
FAQ.

> Then, I'm wondering about partitioning tools. I can use
> PartitionMagic 7.0. I've heard
> of gparted, but not used it. Any advice?

I used BootItNG (the partitioning part of it) in the past. Works quite well
and I never lost a bit of data.

Bye...

Dirk

Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> Dude, I'm getting a Dell!
>
> It's gonna come with Vista, and I have to use it that way for work.
> But I want to
> put a Linux partition on there. So I need to repartition.
>
> Having learned to be cautious, I'm wondering if there is a good open-source way
> to back up about 300GB of NTFS such that I can restore fairly smoothly. It has
> to be fairly fast, so file-by-file copies are probably going to suck.
> I'll have 100MB
> ethernet to a big-enough drive.
>
> Then, I'm wondering about partitioning tools. I can use
> PartitionMagic 7.0. I've heard
> of gparted, but not used it. Any advice?
>
> TIA
>
> ++ kevin
>
>
>

If I recall correctly they no longer actually ship a windoze CD/DVD to
install/restore from, don't forget to make your copies just in case you
make a mistake and have to reinstall windoze. I would hate for you to
have to go buy a copy of something you already had to pay for.

Good luck.

Dale

:-) :-)

Actually you shouldn't need any open source or 3rd party software for repartitioning Vista. From what I heard vista disk manager allows you to resize it's partitions. You may want to try that first, if it doesn't work then try one of the other suggestions.


For backing up your data, I would suggest you look at ntfsclone, I use it for imaging all my clients at work. Just make sure your disk is clean before you clone it.

--James

On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 1:39 AM, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman@gmail.com> wrote:

Dude, I'm getting a Dell!



It's gonna come with Vista, and I have to use it that way for work.

But I want to

put a Linux partition on there. *So I need to repartition.



Having learned to be cautious, I'm wondering if there is a good open-source way

to back up about 300GB of NTFS such that I can restore fairly smoothly. *It has

to be fairly fast, so file-by-file copies are probably going to suck.

I'll have 100MB

ethernet to a big-enough drive.



Then, I'm wondering about partitioning tools. *I can use

PartitionMagic 7.0. *I've heard

of gparted, but not used it. *Any advice?



TIA



++ kevin





--

Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

On Tuesday 23 December 2008 08:39:17 Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> Dude, I'm getting a Dell!

Which one?

I have a very new high spec Dell and have already done the very painful
process of finding out what hardware does not work. I could save you the
pain...

the iwl3945 does not reliably start the 3945 wifi card
the fingerprint reader somehow does not work...



--
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

On Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:39:17 -0800
"Kevin O'Gorman" <kogorman@gmail.com> wrote:

> Dude, I'm getting a Dell!
>
> It's gonna come with Vista, and I have to use it that way for work.
> But I want to
> put a Linux partition on there. So I need to repartition.
>
> Having learned to be cautious, I'm wondering if there is a good
> open-source way to back up about 300GB of NTFS such that I can
> restore fairly smoothly. It has to be fairly fast, so file-by-file
> copies are probably going to suck. I'll have 100MB
> ethernet to a big-enough drive.
>
> Then, I'm wondering about partitioning tools. I can use
> PartitionMagic 7.0. I've heard
> of gparted, but not used it. Any advice?

Um, I thought Vista could resize it's own partitions...

Also, if it's a new machine, use the re-install disk for your back up

RobbieAB

Dude, the Dell is here!!!

On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 9:08 AM, Robert Bridge <robert@robbieab.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:39:17 -0800
> "Kevin O'Gorman" <kogorman@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dude, I'm getting a Dell!
>>
>> It's gonna come with Vista, and I have to use it that way for work.
>> But I want to
>> put a Linux partition on there. So I need to repartition.
>>
>> Having learned to be cautious, I'm wondering if there is a good
>> open-source way to back up about 300GB of NTFS such that I can
>> restore fairly smoothly. It has to be fairly fast, so file-by-file
>> copies are probably going to suck. I'll have 100MB
>> ethernet to a big-enough drive.
>>
>> Then, I'm wondering about partitioning tools. I can use
>> PartitionMagic 7.0. I've heard
>> of gparted, but not used it. Any advice?
>
> Um, I thought Vista could resize it's own partitions...

Maybe. I'll look into that next, because I'm hoping that will keep
me from messing
up the existing stuff too much. It's not obvious to me how I should
repartition. The
current setup looks like this to fdisk, and I'm a bit nervous about
the meaning and use
of partition sda5. If I add anything, I either have to destroy it,
renumber it or move it.

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x92cd386f

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 5 40131 de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 6 1280 10240000 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 * 1280 30075 231295156 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 30075 30402 2620416 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 30076 30402 2619392 dd Unknown

Command (m for help): q

> Also, if it's a new machine, use the re-install disk for your back up

Not on your life. There are about 6 of these, with the software that's
loaded. A bunch of them take a reeeeaaaalll long time to load. OTOH,
the ntfsclone that the kind guy above clued me in about took about 40
minutes. Another 15 or so for the smaller partitions and MBR, and I
could rebuild from a completely erased hard drive. Plus I really like
backups (long sad experience).

>
> RobbieAB
>



--
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD