Partition-Saving is a disk imaging utility for Linux, Windows and DOS environments that can save disk partitions in one of the several supported disk image formats.
This utility was originally called Savepart but was renamed to avoid conflict with a similarly named OS/2 utility.
Common uses
Some common uses for Partition-Saving are as follows: Backup of individual disk partitions. Volume backups are very useful for recovery in the case of a disk failure or data corruption Correction of boot parameters as boot sector content or Windows boot configuration
Features
Partition-Saving has following features: Backup of any partition types (sector by sector)Corresponding manual chapters for complete disk, one partition Backup of FAT12, FAT16, FAT32,Corresponding manual chapters for FAT, ext2/3/4 and NTFS Ext2, Ext3, Ext4 (not all options), NTFS partitions with only occupied sectors (not a file by file backup, but similar in size with keeping disk organizationCorresponding manual chapter) Backup of Master boot record, partition table (both MBR and GPT format), FAT boot sector content and superblock Compression of dataCorresponding manual chapter Saving a partition over itself (in case there is only one partition on the disk)Corresponding manual chapter Mount a backup file to extract only some filesCorresponding manual chapter Modification of the Windows Registry to force partition drive letterUnderstanding MultiBooting by Dan Goodell Modification of some filesystem content: boot sector, Windows multi-boot boot sector, Windows boot configuration, boot sector and superblock backup, bad clusters list
It can be used either through command line, text based or batch processing mode.
Limitations
Partition-Saving has following limitations: Backup of a running OS is not possible (less for DOS): that means it needs to boot from another OS or from a Live CD (a FreeDOS one is provided) to backup Linux or Windows system partition When a full backup is performed, restoration can only be done on partition of same size and at same place on disk. The Chunauti option can be used to work around this, but no correction will be done on partition content to reflect this incompatibility (as FAT boot sector content) When only occupied sectors are saved, restoration can be done on a partition of different size but with limitations on this size Creating backup files on NTFS drive from DOS (and Linux one if one's Linux does not know how to write on NTFS drive) is not available, but modifying an existing file can be used. So if needed, dummy files from Windows can e created and then used from DOS to perform the backupCorresponding manual chapter
See also List of disk cloning software
References
External links