[Linux-NTFS-User] Trouble restoring NTFS partition, must erase the partition to be successful

[Michael L. <ml...@lu...>]

Greetings-

** Note: Previously I sent this question to the email addy found on the ntfsclone man page that was listed to report problems to, which goes to the -dev list. Trying on -user as I have not received a 
response on -dev.

I have been working with ntfsclone and ntfs-3g for several versions of Ubuntu now. Recently with Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) or 10.04 (Lucid) I encountered that I needed to erase the NTFS partition in order
to get a successful restore of the image. (I think the machine was still running 9.10 when I encountered the following error, though I have since upgraded the machine to 10.04)

Specifically why I discovered it, I have made several snapshots of a Windows XP partition. I was trying to find the last backup BEFORE I joined our Samba PDC domain. I would restore the image, reboot
into XP, and was waiting to see the "Welcome" screen rather than the C-A-D screen indicating the workstation image had been joined to the domain.

Not until I added the wipe of the partition did the restore work properly. I restored a given image, rebooted, still the C-A-D screen. Puzzled why I could only find images taken joined to the domain,
I added an erase of the partition, and restored the same image. THEN I rebooted and got the "Welcome" screen I was expecting to see.

Below is the restore script I am talking about:

#!/bin/bash

echo "Erasing the Windows partition"
/bin/dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda1

echo "Loading the Windows partition"
/bin/gunzip -c 20100409-171431-PackingConfig.cdrive.img.gz | /usr/sbin/ntfsclone --restore-image --overwrite /dev/sda1 -

The syntax looks about the same as the man page for ntfsclone indicates to use. I find no mention that the partition must be blank in order to get a good restore.

Any clues why the erase would be needed?

Sincerely,

-- 
Michael Lueck
Lueck Data Systems
http://www.lueckdatasystems.com/