Chapter 11. Linux and Windows

This chapter explains how to perform a bare-metal recovery of Linux or Windows running on a standard Intel system. You should be able to use this procedure to recover any other operating system that runs on standard Intel systems. It has been tested with CentOS 4.0.2 (also known as RedHat Enterprise 4), Windows 2000, and Windows XP. (This procedure does not work with Macintosh Intel systems because they are customized for Mac OS. See Chapter 14 for the Mac OS procedure.) The procedure requires only open-source tools.

This chapter is a collaboration between Reed Robins and W. Curtis Preston. Reed is a data protection specialist with GlassHouse Technologies.

This procedure works for a Windows-only system, but it does use a Linux distribution that can run straight from a CD. Windows users will have to run a few Linux commands, but we do our best to keep them simple. If we had found an open-source bare-metal recovery tool that runs on Windows, we would have written a separate chapter for it. Unfortunately, at this writing, that doesn't exist.

If you're a Windows user who has never touched Linux, we urge you to at least try the procedures in this chapter before giving up on the idea. If you still find them too difficult, we also cover G4L, which is an open-source product that is similar to the commercial product Ghost. It uses Linux but requires much less interaction with the operating system. Finally, we also mention a few commercial products at the end of the chapter.

Due to the availability of inexpensive disk and the ease of recovery that disk brings to the table, this is an entirely disk-based procedure. You can use a Unix NFS share or a Windows share as a target. Any disk-like target that can be mounted before a backup or restore will work with this procedure. If you're interested in other disk targets, it would be worthwhile to read through the complete backup and recovery HOWTO on the Linux Documentation Project at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO. This HOWTO has helpful hints for reducing the amount of information being backed up for a minimal OS restore.