>-----Original Message----- >From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf >Of ML >Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 9:46 PM >To: CentOS mailing list >Subject: [CentOS] [Slightly OT] Data Preservation > >HI All, > >So I have 5 1U servers (running Windows) that have Ultra 320 SCSI >Drives in them. > >The owner of these boxes wants the drives captured in their current >states to .iso or .cdr or something where if the need arises the data >can be viewed, used again, etc. > >So what is the best approach? Boot from a Live CD, hook up a USB >external HD and do what? Can I create a .iso or .cdr (or some other >portable format) and have it created on the external USB? > >Thoughts on this process would be appreciated. Others have already suggested Clonezilla och g4u. In either case, it might be a good idea to run the perl-applet "win-preclone" (requires ActivePerl) on the servers. This applet will fill all empty hd-space on the servers with zeroes, significantly decreasing the resulting gz-file you'll get from either Clonezilla or g4u. Neither of the clone tools mentioned will keep the servers online and available for external use while the cloning is in progress. You might want to check up on this with the owner, if the servers are mission-critical, or something to that effect. Over here, a clone from a WinXP-box (with Office and bunch of other standard apps we deploy) residing on a 40GB hd will result in a 8GB-file. After running the win-preclone perl script on it, it will be about 2GB. Just to give you an idea. Make sure you have space enough on the ftp-server, you're cloning to. HTH. -- /Sorin -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature Size: 5106 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20091005/52e34746/attachment-0005.bin>