Using Linux as a Windows recovery tool.

I had a dual boot setup on my computer, but then Windows crashed a first time so I had to reinstall it and lose the Grub and I was tired of playing shell monkey to fix ti to reaccess my Debian distro so I spent about 2 weeks using Windows until it crashed AGAIN.

So now I reinstalled both Windows and Linux in the right order to avoid making grub going crazy, but because of the huge amount of shell reconfiguration for my ATI drivers I don't want to reinstall either system ever again in the future. So I was thinking about using Linux to copy my Windows partition, so next time Windows play dumb as always I can just past the partition and be done with it in 30 minutes. I do enjoy Linux, but poor flash support and my steam account is making me stick with Windows.

Now of course Gparted has no option to copy the partition except to past it right away, so I tried to simply copy all the Windows files into a compressed folder and it seems to work without much problem except the Bin being corrupted. Now not the most elegant way of going about it but it works good enough right now, I basically have partitions for Windows and Linux plus a 500GB documents Partition so I don't freak out about formatting my HD and back of documents.

Now what I want is a software to copy my Windows Partition and save it from my Debian distro, I could use a liveboot CD put I don't feel like having a second LB disc as I already have 4 Knoppix discs and I want to be able to do backups on the confiness of the Gnome.

Any suggestions ?

 

From Linux, try Clonezilla.

From Windows, you can use Macrium Reflect. I personally use Macrium Reflect. You can choose which partitions to copy back upon restore.

 

Thanks, I will try to use Clonezilla.

 

Solved, I used Clonezilla to make a back up of my whole Windows install with all drivers installed, so now I don't have to waste time about reinstalling both systems of my dualboot anymore