Making a Windows disk a file on Linux

[Kenneth E. Lussier]

On Thu, 2004-09-09 at 23:12 -0400, Jeff Macdonald wrote:
> 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).

Are you just trying to preserve just the data, or are you trying to
preserve the Windows system itself? If you are just trying to preserve
the data, you could use mkisofs and create an iso9660 file system, then
mount it like this: 
mount -t iso9660 -o ro,loop=/dev/loop0 windows.iso /foo

All of the files will be preserved and usable (not writable, though),
but it will no longer be a usable windows system.

Or, you could just tar and bzip the filesystem, then extract it when you
need it. 

HTH,
Kenny
-- 
Kenneth E. Lussier <klussier at comcast.net>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/private/gnhlug-discuss/attachments/20040910/51336eff/attachment.bin