[GUIDE] How to backup snow partition to image saved directly in NTFS

[night_mare007]

Hi...

I found that after a very long time of fine tuning and massing A LOT with my snow - I want to have a solid, complete, clone backup, "Ghost" style image - so when doomsday arrive - It will be possible to restore that image that image which was stored in advanced on a NTFS partition.

( I have MBR file table on my HDD: only one HFS+ partition ( Snow OSX ) and the rest are NTFS partitions )

 

Everything sounds great, but in reality - we have a problem:

In order to create the OSX clone - you cannot boot OSX's partition(because of permission issues), and must use snow's install cd for that.

But when you load that cd, out-of-the-box you don't have NTFS WRITE permission.

- SO HOW CAN YOU BACKUP THAT PRECIOUS PARTITION ?!

 

Requirement:

1. SNOW INSTALL DISK + knowing how to boot to the actual install menu.

2. HDD SPACE ! - on your target NTFS partition have at list 80% free space of your current "Used" snow partition space.

3. TIME - booting the install disk from DVD is slow and backup process also slow ! (Approx 30~45 min.... )

 

How to BACKUP ?

1. Boot up your snow install disk, and arrive to the screen where you can enter "Utilities->Terminal" from the upper bar.

2. UNMOUNT your NTFS partition where you want to save the snow image to using the command:

umount /Volume/YOUR_PARTITION_NAME

3. Make newdir under /Volume:

mkdir /Volume/DESTINATION

4. Mount the same NTFS partiton from above with R/W Permissions:

mount_ntfs -o rw /dev/diskXsY /Volume/DESTINATION

**If you don't know your X&Y partition value you can run those 2 commands:

1. To view all current partitions:

ls -l /dev/disk*

2. To view a partition details (name, size etc...)

diskutill info /dev/diskXsY

5. exit terminal using command+Q or the upper command bar.

6. Enter "Disk utility" using the upper bar: "Utilities->Disk Utility"

7. At the left side of "Disk utility" choose your SNOW partition and press on the "New Image" button, then:

- under "Saved as" enter the image name.

- press the "down arrow" button the the right of the "saved as" line to view all your partitions.

on this new opened section - select your DESTINATION partition as I covered above.

(you can pick your favorite folder within that partition)

- under "image format" pick "Compressed"

- under "Encryption" make sure it's picked as "none"

8. click "Save" and WAIT. ( my ~15GB used snow partition space took me about 20-25 min to make that image copy.

 

How to RESTORE ?

1. As above, load Snow install disk and load "Disk Utility".

2. From the partitions list choose your current massed-up/future-to-be Snow partition, and click on the "Erase" Tab.

Then under Format Choose "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)", write a name - then press "Erase..." button, twice.

3. Afterward, Click the "Restore" tab.

- In the "Source" line click on "Image" and select your saved DMG IMAGE that you saved using the instruction above.

- In "Destination" line drag&drop your new formatted "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" partition.

- Leave the "Erase destination" checkbox at checked state.

4. Press Restore and WAIT.

 

 

Now, you can live with serenity and peace - cuz that Frakingtosh ass is well preserve!