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I'm trying to install Linux Mint alongside Windows 8 on my laptop, but the install disc did not recognize Windows, so I'll have to do a custom install, which is something I've never done, and I want to back up my Win install in case I screw up and I can't fix it with the boot-repair CD.

On my HDD first I have three hidden Windows partitions, the 2nd one being the boot partition, the C: partition which has Windows and important stuff that I want to back up, then the D: partition which is very large with media files and I don't care much for it, and then some empty space where I would put Linux at the end.

I want to backup the HDD using dd. I don't have enough space to back up the entire drive, but I can backup everything except the D: partition and the unallocated space. If I screw up the HDD during the Linux install, will I be able to restore the Win install from the dd backup? I don't mind if I lose data on the non-backed up partition. (Will the backup work if that partition gets corrupted in the meantime?)

Zekoslaw
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1 Answers1

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You can try:

sudo dd conv=sync,noerror bs=8k if=/dev/sda6 of=/home/backup-file

Then you can copy backup-file to external drive and later use it to get your saved data.

When later you want do that you would need to mount it, so run:

sudo losetup /dev/loop1 /home/backup-file

sudo mount /dev/loop1 /mnt/backup

If you have not much data to backup with low dispersion over the drives/partitions, if it's all rather in one or a few folders then wouldn't it be easier to save those folders/files straight to the external disk?

You can read more on all of these popular threads.

Community
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Ruslan Gerasimov
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