[NOTE: there is a question at the end if you want to skip my reply to
all the emails posted]
To all who have responded, many thanks. There were alot of queries to go
through and I am only now at a point that I can take first look at them
as a collective suggestion.
I wanted to clarify a couple questions.
I have no objection to buying a memory stick large enough to hold the
image or an external hard drive. I did the following to see what I am
dealing with "worst case scenario":
+++
[root@yoyo ~]# du -hs /
du: cannot access `/proc/2395/task/2395/fd/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access `/proc/2395/task/2395/fdinfo/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access `/proc/2395/fd/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access `/proc/2395/fdinfo/4': No such file or directory
du: cannot access `/home/paul/.gvfs': Permission denied
15G /
[root@yoyo ~]#
+++
[not certain about the permission denied and no such file/directory ???]
So if I bump it one to be safe, I can see prices for 32GB stick between
$35-$80. External hard drives for 500GB seem to be a bit more than
double ($75-$200). Heck, if I am considering getting the laptop
repaired, I already know that money will be moving out of my pocket. At
least the stick and/or hard drive can have other uses besides this one
emergency.
I would have preferred DVD set only because I wanted non-volatile memory
... burned and checked before restoring MS opsys. I've had sticks drop
info and hard drives can crash. But it is not a mandatory ... all of
your comments make it seem like stick or hard drive is a reasonable way
to go.
I am getting the sense that clonezilla is a good way to go compared to
some of the other ideas and Joe Zeff's comment of "Clonezilla has its
advantages, such as sanity checks and a progress bar" makes it sound
like what I need as sanity checks are real important. My sense is that
dd and/or ddrescue could be used but they were designed for other
purposes and therefore clonezilla may be the closest match to what I
want. I saw alot of other programs to look at, but the comment of
usb/hdrive with Clonezilla seemed to be the majority suggestion of choice.
I just got finished testing that I can use external video port on the
laptop (though I need a better cable) so I know that I can do the
operation without worrying if the laptop's display craps out. Not to
mention crapping out when restoring Vista from rescue disks.
Had the weird discovery that today it started out really bad (when it
was first turned on and presumably cool) and got better the longer it
stayed on. Overheating theory sinks in plausiblity and Jarmo's bad
hardware / connections obsevation moves up.
The list has been very helpful on answers to this one and I appreciate
it. I think its now up to me to get good VGA cable and probably 32GB
stick and give Clonezilla a try.
My two questions are ... am I correct in assuming that after I create
the stick that I can boot off it to test that it is a working copy? and
do I need partedmagic if all I want is clonezilla?
Thanks again,
Paul
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