I have planned to store my dual boot (Windows + A Linux distro) in images using dd to clone them, but I’m not sure if it is a good idea and if is is possible.
Both OS are going to be installed in separated disk I.E: Windows: /dev/sda and Linux Distro: /dev/sdb
-
Windows: My idea is to shrink the primary partition (C:) and clone the whole disk with the 3 partitions into an image. So, when I need to install Windows again, I just gonna decompress the image into the disk
/dev/sda(I really dont care about the data which will be lost). -
Linux Distro: Here goes the real issue. Any linux distro normally is composed by 3 partitions (as far as I worked with them). I know It could be 2 if we decide not to create the swap partition.
Well, my idea is to clone each partition into separated images I.E:root partition '/' into -> root_partition.img.gz EFI Partition into -> boot.img.gzSo, when I need to reinstall the linux distro, I would decompress each image into the apropiate partition of its disk.
Also, I forgot to comment, but, there will be an NTFS partition at the end of this disk (
/dev/sdb).So, do I really need to clone EFI partition from this disk? I’m not sure if this partition is susceptible to receive changes by the grub or any other stuff, or even size changes.
To end with this, I’ve got some doubts about this swap partition. Lately I’ve been reading that Swap partition nowadays is not neccesary due to some distros create a swap file and use it, however, ¿Does this file change its size on runtime? I mean, If it has not taken a lot of space of the partition during the clone partition into image compression process (booted into LiveUSB to do that), I can afford that size. Otherwise, if the swap file is too large, then I prefer to deal with swap partition.
The main reason I want to store my OS into images is due to I just have setup the configuration of each one, base programs that I always install etc… and I won’t lose time on installing everything again.
