20 Nov
2001
20 Nov
'01
3:07 a.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Erlacher [mailto:edick@idcomm.com]
medium, and subsequently writing them back to a
physically
identical (not just
logically identical) target, without consideration for
Why not just logically identical, then? ... assuming, of course, the same
o/s would handle devices which are logically identical in an identical
manner. (This may not be a safe assumption)
[snip]
The bitwise image transfer from disk=>tape can be
done
without knowledge of
either the compression scheme or of the OS/file system used
on it. It does
require, however, that the entire image be recorded so it can
be restored in its
entirety. The result is that you can use a different OS to
do that task though
it's not required, and the penalty is that you have no access
to the file data,
though you could, I guess, go to the trouble of deciphering
the bitwise image
into a logical file system if one originally existed. You
can do that under any
circumstances, but it's a lot of trouble and requires you
know a great deal
about the low-level processes of converting the data on the
orginal drive into
the files comprising it.
I think you've just summed up my previous point. That being, of course,
that if you can record a bit-by-bit image, you should also be able to
interpret this image (with quite a bit of extra work), and find the
component files. In fact, I'd add that depending on the amount of extra
work you're willing to do, you can likely restore the image in a "logical"
fashion to a volume that is completely different from the one on which it
originally resided.
Regards,
Chris
Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL
/usr/bin/perl -e '
print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl
Hacker.")."\x08!\n");
'