[Pinscher]

So I have 2 WD Raptor Xs that I used to have in RAID 0 but I took them out of it so I could have one be my XP and one Vista. Now I never use XP so its basically a waste of a drive. I want to put them back into RAID 0 for Vista. I'm guessing a disk image is the best way to backup the stuff on my Vista drive? I really don't know. How do they work? If this is not the way I should go about doing this please tell me how.

Thanks guys

[office politics]

a disk image is a bit level copy of the data on a drive or partition. images are usually created for the ability to perform a bare metal restore of a machine. meaning we can restore the machine in a single operation as opposed to installing the OS and restoring additional backup files.

disk images can also be copies of cds; typically in the form of iso's. these are usually made to create virtual (file) copies of physical media.

[Pinscher]

I like the sound of that but I obviously won't be able to fit the disk image on a DVD or two. I have a wd black 1tb that I could put it on but then I wouldn't have an OS to boot up into to reapply the disk image to the raptors.

Should I just back up my important files to my 1tb and then just bite the bullet and re-install everything on the raptors?

[office politics]

you'd be suprised how much you can pack the files down to when you use compression. i used a knoppix live cd with the procedures below. used disk space was 33gb. the compressed image was 6gb

http://michi-bs.blogspot.com/2008/06/hdd-or-partition-backup-with-dd.html


Getting around file size limitations using split
When making images, it's quite easy to run up against various file size limitations. One way to work around a given file size limitation is to use the split command. 

# dd if=/dev/hda1 | gzip -c | split -b 2000m - /mnt/hdc1/backup.img.gz.This example is using dd to take an image of the first partition on the first harddrive. 
The results are passed through to gzip for compression 
The -c option switch is used to output the result to stdout. 
The compressed image is then piped to the split tool 
The -b 2000m switch tells split how big to make the individual files. You can use k and m to tell switch kilobytes and megabytes (this option uses bytes by default). 
The - option tells split to read from stdin. Otherwise, split would interpret the /mnt/hdc1... as the file to be split. 
The /mnt/hdc1... is the prefix for the created files. Split will create files named backup.img.gz.aa, backup.img.gz.ab, etc. 
To restore the multi-file backup, do the following: 

# cat /mnt/hdc1/backup.img.gz.* | gzip -dc | dd of=/dev/hda1Cat recombines contents of the compressed and split image files to stdout, in order. 
Results are piped through gzip for decompression. 
And are then written to the first partition of the hard drive with dd.

EDIT - I would do a file level backup in yopur situation

[Pinscher]

Well I have 130GB used space on my vista drive so going by what you got, it would probably still be somewhere around 24GB which is like 5 DVDs. I suppose that is not too big but once I get the disk image made, how do I put it back on my raptors once they are wiped and setup in RAID?

[office politics]

you currently have a drive with xp and a separate drive for vista. you want to create a disk stripe with only vista.

if this is correct, then you might be able to get away with performing the disk backup on the vista drive. wipe both drives. setup raid. restore the image. resize the partition (if wanted).

[Pinscher]

Thats correct.

How would I restore the image though, thats what I don't get.

[office politics]

download a live cd, boot to it, run commands to restore the image

i used www.knoppix.com

other people on this board like clonezilla

[Pinscher]

Oh ok thanks alot. rep for you

EDIT: One more thing. I went to backup and it wants to backup both my drives but I don't want anything thats on my XP drive. Is there a way to do a bit level backup of just my Vista drive without going into my rig, unplugging the XP drive, backing up, then plugging it back in and wiping them, etc?

[office politics]

if you have any problems, we're here to help.

thx