Image; Partition w/out modifying hard drive

[Johnboy]

Anyone know of a good/reliable program that can do a sector-by-
sector image;restore of HD partitions under windows 7 and XP
resize/create partitions and yet does not modify the MBR nor
begining sectors of the hard drive? Acronis does modify the MBR,
so does Bootitng. This presents a problem if these programs are
buggy and make errors as you cannot recover the HD to it's
original state. Earlier versions of Ghost did not I think?

 

[Arno]

Anyone know of a good/reliable program that can do a sector-by-
sector image;restore of HD partitions under windows 7 and XP
resize/create partitions and yet does not modify the MBR nor
begining sectors of the hard drive? Acronis does modify the MBR,
so does Bootitng. This presents a problem if these programs are
buggy and make errors as you cannot recover the HD to it's
original state. Earlier versions of Ghost did not I think?

dd_rescue under Linux.

If you insist on using a system that makes your intended
operation hard (windows), there is a dd port for
windows referenced here http://www.forensicswiki.org/wiki/Dd

Arno

 

[Rod Speed]

Johnboy wrote

Anyone know of a good/reliable program that can do
a sector-by-sector image;restore of HD partitions under
windows 7 and XP resize/create partitions and yet does
not modify the MBR nor begining sectors of the hard drive?

There are utes that allow you to save and restore just the
MBR and beginning sectors of the hard drive, so you can
use them in conjunction with something that can image
and restore by sector to get the result you want.

Acronis does modify the MBR, so does Bootitng.
This presents a problem if these programs are buggy

One obvious approach is to use the ones that arent buggy.

and make errors as you cannot recover the HD to it's original state.

You can if you separately save and restore the original MBR and beginning sectors.