Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: "Carlos E.R." Newsgroups: alt.os.linux Subject: Re: When I back-up .... Coping my Entire Internal HD to an external HD Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2025 15:57:41 +0100 Lines: 57 Message-ID: <5kv5alxctp.ln2@Telcontar.valinor> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net +w721iKbGGTINYQUOemZIwRkCr8f6xQuO+bWiYYXFAkwM/QIy9 X-Orig-Path: Telcontar.valinor!not-for-mail Cancel-Lock: sha1:wbxOXdONCXWhJOH23/XxEWHQMek= sha256:1MZszXTzbMC81kLoa8U8XSeJooY/GDy8XSOiTrmNEZI= User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird Content-Language: es-ES, en-CA In-Reply-To: Xref: csiph.com alt.os.linux:81096 On 2025-03-11 13:21, David W. Hodgins wrote: > On Tue, 11 Mar 2025 06:52:17 -0400, Daniel70 september.org> wrote: > >> Some time ago, I backed up my Laptop's 500GB internal HD to an 2TB >> external HD using (I forget) ... It might have been 'dd' but I doubt it. > > Depending on how you did it, the backup may be in a file in a > partition on the 2TB drive, or the partition table may have been > copied so that the partitions on the 2TB drive are the same as they > were on the 500GB drive. Just my thoughts. > >> However, the 500GB Internals Image took up 500GB on the External (i.e. a >> byte-by-byte image, even the empty bytes, apparently!). >> >> Now, when I look at that External HD using my Win 11 Desk-top, it >> doesn't 'see' anything. > > WIndows should see an "unknown" file system in the existing partition(s). And helpfully offer to format it >:-P >> Is this because Linux is at a 'Higher'/'deeper' level than Windows can >> 'see'?? > > M$ doesn't want to make it easy for windows users to use anything else. > >> If I back-up this Win-11 Desktop to the same External HD, is there a >> possibility that Win-11 will write itself over the Linux Image?? Or is >> Win-11 able to detect that there is 'something' there so will go looking >> for the next available UNUSED portion of the External HD?? > > It really matters how the backup was done. Windows may overwrite it > or it may allow you to create new partitions on the drive. I don't > trust windows for anything, and haven't used it much since XP. I > occasionally troubleshoot things for others, but try to avoid it as > much as I can. > > Don't write anything to the drive until you know exactly what is on > there. Working with low level tools like dd make it easy to wipe out > data with a single typo. Right. Start listing the partition table, from Linux. Then do something like: file -s /dev/sdZ* It might have been 'dd', or perhaps Clonezilla. Maybe there is a single ext4 partition there, with the image files inside. -- Cheers, Carlos.