On 2004-08-03 (Tuesday) 22:44, Mick Mearns wrote: I do not know such, but I can give you an idea: mount your fat partition, create a file with zeroes to take all the free space on that it, umount the partition and compress and backup the whole partition. I assume you have your XP on /dev/hda2, so: [root@fedora ~]# mkdir /mnt/c [root@fedora ~]# mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/c [root@fedora ~]# cd /mnt/c [root@fedora /mnt/c]# cat /dev/zero > ZEROFILE cat: write error: No space left on device [root@fedora /mnt/c]# rm -f ZEROFILE [root@fedora /mnt/c]# cd [root@fedora ~]# umount /mnt/c [root@fedora ~]# sync [root@fedora ~]# dd if=/dev/hda2 | bzip2 -vv -9 > /mnt/home/hda1.bz2 # ( or 'dd if=/dev/hda2 | gzip -9 > hda1.gz' ) Then backup /mnt/home/hda1.bz2 where you want. You need the 'ZEROFILE' in order to full the unused partition space with zeroes, which will be compressed very much (128MB zeroes | bzip2 -9 > 112 bytes). When you need to restore your XP just do 'bzcat hda1.gz > /dev/hda2'. All files and permissions (this trick can be done a bit harder with any fs) will be 1:1. !!! WARNING !!! 1. You should restore to the same partition (size). 2. Any mistake like /dev/hda1 instead of /dev/hda2 will totally destroy /dev/hda1. 3. This does not take care of the MBR. You might need to recover it with the XP's rescue mode -> manual -> restore boot sector. !!! WARNING !!! Hope this helps :) PS: I used such trick to 'clone' some machines with same hardware and disks. -- Regards, Doncho N. Gunchev Registered Linux User #291323 at counter.li.org GPG-Key-ID: 1024D/DA454F79 http://pgp.mit.edu Key fingerprint = 684F 688B C508 C609 0371 5E0F A089 CB15 DA45 4F79

--- "Doncho N. Gunchev" <mr700(a)globalnet.bg&gt; wrote: Hello; thank you very much. I now have a large file, I cannot test it untill I have to re-install XP. Mick M. ===== Dogs have Masters - Siamese Cats have Staff! __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail