Using a Linux Live CD to clone XP and/or Vista

by saikee

An installed Windows XP protects itself from being cloned even for the backup purpose. Specialised software like the Norton Ghost, Acronis or PowerQuest Drive Image has to be used so that the OS can be moved to a bigger hard drive in a disk upgrade.

Linuxs dd command also works the same way but this needed to be performed on the whole hard disk so that the MBR and partition table are cloned as one whole lot.

The method described below shows how Linux can be used to clone a XP partition. In the example here the source is a XP Pro partition in a 30Gb IDE drive recognised by Linux as hda1. For simplicity I used a disk with just one partition in it. The source XP partition has a SATA driver previously incorporated when installed. The target is a brand new unformatted 200 Gb SATA disk recognised by Linux as sda (older kernel may report hde).

To demonstrate the power of Linux I use only a Live CD from Knoppix 3.4. There is no other bootable Linux in the hard disk.

>> Go here for the steps to clone XP using Knoppix