[Cialug] Re: DSMGG LAN Party (WAS: Administrative stuff)

[David Champion]

Tim Wilson wrote:
> On Dec 5, 2007 4:09 PM, David Champion <dchampion at visionary.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> Jeffrey Ollie wrote:
>>     
>>> On 12/5/07, Tim Wilson <tim_linux at wilson-home.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> I'm trying to get my new laptop ready.  I want to do a backup of it
>>>>         
>> before
>>     
>>>> Vista screws with it.  And doing a backup of it has proved to be a
>>>>         
>> pain.  If
>>     
>>>> I can get it ready in time, I plan on registering.  If not, I guess
>>>>         
>> I'll
>>     
>>>> catch it next time.  What is the registration deadline?
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> You're going to run Vista on a gaming PC?  Everything that I've read
>>> indicates that XP is much faster than Vista.  Even if I liked Windows,
>>> I can't think of a compelling reason to switch (other than "Ooh I
>>> gotta have the latest release").
>>>
>>> Jeff
>>>
>>>       
>> I was talking to Dan J. about this at lunch - he mentioned having a
>> Vista laptop for work - with no install CD, and the Vista backup -
>> create DVD thing is apparently a pain.
>>
>> I suggested just ghosting the partition with G4L (ghost for linux), then
>> if you screw it up you can just restore the image.
>>     
>
>
> I want to back up the drive before Vista even boots, that way if it fails
> the first time, I can always restore it back.  I also want to back it up
> after I go through the massive Windows Update list that is sure to be
> waiting for me.  But the backup before Vista boots is where I'm stuck.  I
> have Norton Ghost 2003, with a DOS based version.  It sees the internal
> drive, but not the external USB hard drive.  The laptop can boot from the
> external drive, but DOS and Norton can't see it.  So my thought was to put a
> FAT32 partition on the external drive, format it so it boots, and put DOS
> USB drivers on it.  I've gotten all the files together (I think), now I just
> have to put them on the hard drive.  So with luck, I'll back it up tonight.
> If that fails, then I can still use Ghost to back up to DVD.  Since I don't
> know how bloated Vista is, I'm wary of doing that for fear I run out of
> discs, or have a stack so big, that it is unmanageable.  Or worse yet, one
> of the discs fails, and now I have a bad backup.
>
> I tried DSLinux and Ubuntu 6.10, and had issues either in booting or seeing
> the drives.  Perhaps another version would work better.  Does G4L come with
> Ubuntu?
>
>   
G4L is it's own bootable image. See the forums for help / info.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l

-dc