Backup of hd using DD.

[Thordur I. Bjornsson]

Hello list.

I had an idea about using a tool similar to dd(1) take backup's of
entire disks. 

Here's my situation:
My father has an old PII running Win98 (Don't ask don't tell... he's
using very old financial software ;). Needless to say the thing keeps
getting borked and reinstall of his entire setup is quite frustrating.

Now I was wondering if I could simply set the thing up with all the
programs that he needs + drivers + anti viral &c but minus the financial
software ofcourse and the rip the disk out of the machine put in my
workstation make an image of it and keep it safe and when the machine
goes borked I could simply rip the disk out again put it in my machine
and dd the image back onto the disk and restoring the "good-image" setup
(then I would restore his financial stuff with the most recent backup
(wich he keeps on a zip disk).

Now my questions are:
1) When I dd the image back onto the disk:
	What about the 'free' hd space ?
	What about the bootloader for Win98 ?
	The registry &c ... ?

2) How do I make an image of the entire disk using dd(1) ?
	Or should I use some other software ?

Forgive me if this is asked & answered or if I could have found this
using google (so far nothing of use has showed up in my querys.).

A pointer in the right direction would be greatly appricated.

-- 
Thordur I.	<thib at mi.is>
FreeBSD - Unix the way *I* like it.
A man can do as he will, but not will as he will.