Re: Can I compress a partition and keep all the erased data?
- From: "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2006 05:45:32 +1100
Mark M <nomail@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote
QUESTION
Is there a way to save a 160GB NTFS partition in a
smaller space and at the same time to retain ALL the data?
Yes.
That retained data would include clusters
of *erased* data and *erased* system files.
Yes.
I believe that creating a typical image file of the 160Gb
partition would not include those erased data areas.
Correct.
But is there some other way to do what I want?
Yes.
--------
OBJECTIVE
My objective is to be able go back to this partition
and to undelete data as and when I might need to.
The 160GB partition contains XP Home and is on a PC which
is only a few months old. This means something like 100GB to
140GB of the 160GB is completely virgin space. It seems a pity
not to reclaim this 100GB+ space for use - but only if it's still
possible to KEEP the clusters which contain data but which are not
"marked" to say their data is normally available. (If you see what I
mean!)
Yes.
What you need to do is to image the drive with an imager that can
put every sector into the image file. Most can do that optionally.
Then compress that image file with one of the archivers
like rar. That should keep just one copy of sectors that
have never been used by the OS and which are truly blank.
That way the sectors which have been used will
be kept, even if they are part of a deleted file.
If you find that the image file doesnt compress much,
that would be because the use of the drive hasnt been
as restricted to such a small subset of the drive as you
expect. In other words the OS did use many/most of the
sectors even tho most of the drive is free space. That
might happen if the drive has been quite active if the
OS has used virgin space instead of reusing used space.
It also wont work if something has been used which writes
random data to the drive to test it. Thats not that likely tho.
.
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