Making a Windows disk a file on Linux

[Jeff Macdonald]

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 08:40:15 -0400, Ken D'Ambrosio wrote:
> Kenneth E. Lussier wrote:
> 
> Or... if it's a relatively small disk, you could just take an image of
> the disk (or partition), itself, using "dd" or even "cat" (eg. dd
> if=/dev/hda1 of=image_of_c_drive.img), and then mount it thusly:
> mount -t vfat -o loop image_of_c_drive.img /foo
> You could read and write it, then, 

That is my thinking to. Seems to me that would preserve the file
system the best.

> but you'd also pay the penalty of
> having the image file include all the empty space on the partition.

That is why I was asking about compressing stuff. There is a file
system call squashFS that compresses filesystems. I just noticed that
last night.  I don't know if 2.6 kernels have it, but that might be an
option.

The other option for getting rid of extra space is shrinking the
partition. I haven't played with  those tools, but I'd imagine parted
or a similar tool on a Knoppix CD is reliable. Have you folks had good
luck shrinking partitions?

> 
> Just another option...
> 

And I like it.

-- 
Jeff Macdonald
Ayer, MA