Re: Cult of Unix

On Thu, 1/16/2025 4:48 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2025-01-16 22:37, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

File-copying software like rsync is quite sufficient for doing “bare-metal
restores” on Linux.

 
Not for restoring grub.
 

Some people don't understand what a complete solution is.

A complete solution, these are some of the things it does.

   Record MBR
   Save boot track (first megabyte or whatever)
   Save ESP
   Save Microsoft Reserved (16MB, NoFS)
   Save all partitions.
   Disambiguate BLKID on Windows boot materials.
   Edit BCD file and place the new BLKID values in the menu.
     (This means two boot disks don't interfere with one another in any way).
   Macrium does not disambiguate EXT4 partitions, or edit GRUB, but it
     does back up enough of GRUB so it works. Beware of how Linux behaves
     on two identical disks, because of this (not the fault of Linux).
     Macrium is primarily a Windows tool, that just happens to back up EXTn.
   Back up primary and secondary GPT partition tables, restore to *correct* location on disk.
     (Even if destination disk is smaller, it puts the secondary table in the right place.)

After a bare metal restore, your Windows disk boots immediately.

If there was a structural flaw in the boot materials, when the stuff
was backed up, the Rescue CD also has a Boot Repair for the simpler
kinds of boot faults. It does not have a set of files for ESP, and
cannot "fake" all the details for you. The Windows repair does not have
that capability either.

   Paul