Dump and restore for Windows partitions

[Alex Zbyslaw]

Martin Boulianne wrote:

>Maybe this is a dumb question, but I was wondering if I could use
>dump (and restore) on Windows NTFS partitions.
>
>Say I have a NTFS partition, ad0s1. Could I use:
>   # dump -b 4 -f /backups/winxp.dump /dev/ad0s1
>  
>
No.  Dump is specific to ufs/ufs2 filesystems.  It specifically knows 
the format of the filesystem (superblocks, inodes, directories etc).  
You just get an error if you try:

(cartman)103% dump -0 -f /tmp/foo /windows
  DUMP: Date of this level 0 dump: Wed Jan 30 15:23:25 2008
  DUMP: Date of last level 0 dump: the epoch
  DUMP: Dumping /dev/ad4s1 (/windows) to /tmp/foo
  DUMP: Cannot find file system superblock
  DUMP: The ENTIRE dump is aborted.

I don't know if there are NTFS utils running on FreeBSD that could do 
similar - others may, or search the ports for NTFS related software and 
see what the pkg-descr files say.

--Alex

PS  A question is only dumb if you ask the same one repeatedly.  This 
question might demonstrate some ignorance, but we were all ignorant once 
and questions are one of the best cures!  IMHO, of course. (In the 
computer world, manuals are another cure but the page for dump was 
written when UFS was the *only* filesystem that worked on BSD, so fails 
to actually answer your question).