create backup image of harddisk partition

I have just finished setting up my new WinXP AOA150 with all the programs that I need properly set up. I would hate to do this frequently in case a problem comes up with my netbook. Any recommendations on how to:

• create an image of a partition[/*:m:3gq17c5p]
• restore image to a partition through USB flashdisk[/*:m:3gq17c5p]
• preferably using open source / free programs[/*:m:3gq17c5p]

 

I came just to post this same question. I have driven myself nuts trying to do this. I first transferred a CD image of nerobackitup recovery disk to my USB flash drive. It would boot into the live linux environment, but not load the backitup program for some reason. I just tried making my Flash drive a win98 bootable disk and putting ghost 2003 on it. Ghost 2003 will run and sees my USB external HDD, but will only let me save my image to the flash drive from which I booted. I am all out of ideas here. I'm trying to do boot from flash drive and save my image to USB HDD, no external CD drives or anything. Does anybody out there know how!?

 

That's odd that you can't save the ghost image to your usb hdd b/c that's exactly how I ghosted a friends 8.9" 160GB model and how I'm going to do my D150 160GB model. My only guess could be something with your usb ghost stick. Even though the method might be a bit overkill, I followed this guide to make my usb bootable ghost stick:

http://nightowl.radified.com/bootcd/bootcdintro.html

I followed "Project One" as it was all I needed and everything works as it should.
Hope this helps.

 

I created a backup image of my system by booting with a live distro, in this case BT3, then dd (Diskp Dump) over ssh to my local server. It took quite a while for a 8Gb SSD, just be patient, as long as the network light blinks something is transferring. I haven't restored it yet, but the reverse operation should work.

Code:

dd if=/dev/hda | ssh [email][email protected][/email] "dd of=/directory_of_backups_on_ssh_server/backupfile.iso"

source: http://karlherrick.com/dev/2008/09/12/d ... -over-ssh/

 

yeah I'm not sure what's up with it, I've heard of others doing it the same way also, maybe it's something in my BIOS, or as you said the stick itself, who knows. The reason I'm not going to pursue that route any further is because of this post after yours:

Thank you tritonx! This whole time I've been mucking about, I've had another stick setup with BT3 and it never even occurred to me to use it! I'm going to just mount my external in linux and back it up on there, since I have a lot more eperience mounting an external NTFS drive than I do sshing, but thank you regardless!