Subject: Re: dd if=/dev/sda3 bs=1024 conv=sync|bzip2 >//server/backups/windows_backup.bz2?
From: Brian Dessent <[email-masked]>
To: "'Cygwin List'" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2004 11:24:47 -0800

linda w wrote:
> 
> I thought the above would yield an image backup of my windows partition.

If this is a windows system drive (i.e. containing %WINDIR% and boot
files) then I don't think this will work.  I could be wrong here but I
think there are parts of the disk that are inaccessable while windows is
running, e.g. the SAM database.  These segments can only be read by the
kernel itself, and to back them up you have to do it offline using the
Recovery Console or from booting another partition.  I think you'll find
that Cygwin makes a very poor choice for a backup tool, as compared to
things dedicated to this task such as NTbackup, Ghost, etc.

Brian

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