Making a Windows disk a file on Linux

[Jeff Macdonald]

Hi,
I just bought a new Dell Laptop for my wife and I'd like to use her
old one for Linux. I have a file server running Gentoo that has mp3
and videos and runs Samba for windows networking. What I'd like to do
is dd the windows disk and have the target be a file and then mount
that file as a FAT32 file system. In other words I don't want to
create a partition for the data. I just want to keep it around for a
while until I'm sure I don't need it anymore (a few years, just for
good measure).

Here is the catch, the disk is 60Gigs but only 11Gigs is being used.
So I'd rather have just a 11Gig file instead of a 60 Gig file (I only
have 20 Gigs free anyway). Can I do something like:
dd {opts} | gzip {options} > file
mount {options to read compressed file}
mount {loop options to present previous mount a FAT32}

or should I shrink the drive instead?



-- 
Jeff Macdonald
Ayer, MA