Dell Insprion = HackBook Pro!

[Joe]

Since my computer and a MacBook Pro are nearly identical hardware wise, and I'm hoping to learn Objective-C and write some iPhone apps for a class at school, I've decided to take a swing at making a HackBook Pro.

Bless my poor machine's soul.. this was never intended by the god of computing.

First course of action.. shrink a NTFS. This can't end good.

On another note, does anyone know of software (OS doesn't really matter right now) that can take a partition of a HD (not the whole device) and make it into an image? If this is successful, I want to image my Windows partition, delete it, resize the Mac partition and run Windows in a VM, if at all possible.

[Hitmen]

On another note, does anyone know of software (OS doesn't really matter right now) that can take a partition of a HD (not the whole device) and make it into an image?

dd

[while1]

On another note, does anyone know of software (OS doesn't really matter right now) that can take a partition of a HD (not the whole device) and make it into an image?

dd

PartImage.

http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page

On the page is a link to SysRestoreCD which is a bootable live CD you can burn (or I think they even now have a USB flashdrive version), which has PartImage as one of the installed tools.  It also has Firefox, GPartEd, etc.

If you're familiar with Linux, then you can hook up an external HDD via USB, boot from the SysRestoreCD.  Once booted, you can use the terminal to mount the external HDD and then run PartImage.  In PartImage you can then specify the output for the image of the partition as the path of whereever you want on the mounted device.

[Camel]

/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app

[while1]

/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app

How'd he do that if he doesn't have OSX installed?  He's trying to backup his Windows partition so he can install OSX...

[Joe]

/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app

How'd he do that if he doesn't have OSX installed?  He's trying to backup his Windows partition so he can install OSX...

Nope. If I get OSX installed successfully I want to put my Windows partition in a VM. Actually, Camel hit this spot on (assuming his suggestion works).

But yours looks good too.

On another note, does anyone know of software (OS doesn't really matter right now) that can take a partition of a HD (not the whole device) and make it into an image?

dd

Does that work on only a partition?

[Camel]

How'd he do that if he doesn't have OSX installed?  He's trying to backup his Windows partition so he can install OSX...

The files Disk Utility creates (.dmg) are just disk dumps (as long as you dont use compression or anything like that); they would be compatible with partition-level dd command and any ISO utility.

dd

Does that work on only a partition?

dd input/output is anything you can fopen(); partitions, files, entire disks if you want. dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/console

[Joe]

During a NTFS shrink I fried my Windows installation. However, that's ALL I fried. Currently backing up all my data to my external HD, then just blowing up the entire thing. FTW!

[Joe]

Camel said it'd be nearly impossible. Much harder than it's worth.

I've had more trouble tying shoes. (That's why I always wear sandals.)

A more pressing problem is that I have to get up for class in 2.5 hours, now. So long, sleep.

[Sidoh]

My friend has OSX on a Dell netbook.  I haven't used it myself, but he says it works pretty well.

[Camel]

Camel said it'd be nearly impossible. Much harder than it's worth.

That is not what I said at all; I said you didn't do enough research to dual boot OSX/Windows. There is a reason Apple had to come out with Boot Camp, instead of just telling you to put the Windows CD in. You didn't even know what GPT was!

[MyndFyre]

Camel said it'd be nearly impossible. Much harder than it's worth.

That is not what I said at all; I said you didn't do enough research to dual boot OSX/Windows. There is a reason Apple had to come out with Boot Camp, instead of just telling you to put the Windows CD in. You didn't even know what GPT was!

Oooh, oooh!  GUID partition table!