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05bit044
July 20th, 2009, 03:43 PM
hi
I have dell xps studio with 320 hard disk which contains a recovery partion for windows vista. I installed ubuntu 9.04 in the last 30 gb of my hard disk

1) I may have to re-install windows vista using my recovery which may delete the grub. After the re-installation of vista, i need to install the grub again so that i can choose the operating system. can anyone tel me how to install the grub again.

2)After installing ubuntu, i spent a lot of time installing large number of application packages. If i have to re-install ubuntu again, i wont have patience to install all those applications once more. Is there any method or procedure to back up my entire filesystem as an image so that i can restore it back. If the methodology exists, can anyone tel me how to back up the filesystem and how to restore it.

dstew
July 20th, 2009, 04:17 PM
You can use Partimage to make an image of your Ubuntu partition. See this How-To (http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/partimage).

To restore grub, see this How-To (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=224351). If you don't change your partition structure, just re-install Vista and Ubuntu, this should work. If you re-arrange your partitions, you many have to edit the grub menu.lst file.

jayanramesh
September 22nd, 2009, 12:07 PM
You can't use partimage if your file system is ext4 for it won't support.Instead you had better go for FSarchiver if your filesystem is ext4.

http://www.fsarchiver.org/Main_Page

raymondh
September 22nd, 2009, 03:29 PM
I have used aptonCD (http://aptoncd.sourceforge.net/) with success.... transferring from same versions.

Aside from my regular rsync (to back-up), I also use PING (http://ping.windowsdream.com/) to create an image of my partitions (or HD) and back it up externally. Have not gotten to resort to it though ;)

Good luck