[I Fix 4 U]

Well, i wanted to know if it is save to save the images i'm making of a few partitions to my one large ntfs partition. I don't want to corrupt the filesystem.
I hear there are some DOS programs that make images of partitions too, but the only place i have to put the backup is one large NTFS partition and I want to know if it is safe to write the partition images to that partition.

[brendandonhu]

Yes, its safe, but if your hard drive fails, you lose your backups along with everything else (I'm guessing the partition images are for backups anyways.)

[I Fix 4 U]

Actually its temporary. I'm moving stuff around and repartitioning my second harddrive to make room for gentoo. I just need to put everything on my other harddrive for the moment, and then place it all back once i'm done.
I'm in luck?

[I Fix 4 U]

Kinda in a hurry. Gotta get this done. (tomorrow is last day of holidays)

[brendandonhu]

Yes, it should work fine then.

[I Fix 4 U]

Could you telle me how if you know. How can you write to an ntfs partition with partimage, if linux itself doesn't support writing to ntfs very well???
I just don't want to nuke the main partition in this system.

[brendandonhu]

Partimage can compress your image into a normal gzip file, just copy that onto the NTFS partition like you would any other file. Partimage's FAQ has some info about using NTFS from withing partimage but it mentions possible data loss.

[I Fix 4 U]

Yes, but i need it to be directly written onto the ntfs, as in i choose partition one, and then select the destination for the backup to be the windows (ntfs) partition. It said it wasn't kernel dependent, it should be able to do this right. As a precaution i just defragged all partitions.

[I Fix 4 U]

Also, what about the mft or the metadata in the middle of the ntfs partition being overwritten, should i worry about that or should partimage not use that part?

[brendandonhu]

From partimage FAQ

I need a write support for NTFS. It exists in kernel-2.4 , but it's not enabled in partimage boot disk. How can I use it ?

NTFS write support, as UFS write support are dangerous and supported only by experimental drivers. It can damage partitions, and corrupt data. That's why it's not enabled in partimage-bootdisk. Users who weren't aware of this problem could lose their data if the support was enabled.< /P>

If you need the write support, you will have to use another boot disk. Please , have a look at the question in this FAQ which explains how to build your own boot disk.

[I Fix 4 U]

I use sysresccd. Another site says although the bootdisk can't use it, the program itself can because it writes in blocks etc etc, so writing to ntfs shouldn't be a problem.

[I Fix 4 U]

Update. OOPS i forgot how to specify (from gui) where to save the image too. I know how to set compression and choose the partition to save, but i forgot how to select my NTFS partition as the save destination. It is the second partition of the first harddrive by the way.

[I Fix 4 U]

Bump

[asbo]

You could try getting BartPE, and they include a disk imager of some sort .. didn't play with it much. But I was able to root around on my crashed NTFS partition without any problems whatsoever.

[edit: I guess I'm not exactly sure if it has support for ext2/3 paritions, but I'd assume so ..]