Re: How to backup X-profile & IDEfile compact flash cards

Nama wrote:
> Hi all,
> How would I make backup copies of my X-profile and IDEfile compact
> flash cards in case the cards die or are accidentally erased. I would
> like to be able to back them up, with the option to then copy the
> contents back to CF again.
>
If you're on any flavor of unix, including OS X, you can just insert them and see what device is mounted, then use dd to copy them out.

i.e. if the newly inserted CF card shows up as /dev/sdd (mount shows /dev/sdd1 as the fat12 volume):

dd if=/dev/sdd of=/home/ray/X-profile-CF-card.dd

if=input file.
of=output file.

Be careful with dd, if you get the device paths wrong, you can wipe your whole hard drive. If you're trying to copy the CF card to your hard drive and put the device in of, you'll erase your CF card instead of backing it up! (If you're restoring the file to the card, obviously reverse the parameters.)

Be careful to use the whole device, and not just the mini fat12 partition that tells you it's an X-Profile disk. The trick is, you'd need to know enough unix to be able to figure out what the device name is, but if you type in mount, it'll tell you because it should automatically mount that small fat12 partition, so strip off the partition number of the device and it will probably work. You might need to use the raw device name on some unixes, and you'll almost certainly need to be root.

Sometimes you may need to unmount the card for it to work since if the mini partition is seen as "in use" it may decide to deny access to the drive.

If you're on windows, you could always boot up a live linux CD and get into a command prompt. Most of the current ones recognize NTFS and can mount it r/w, but again, be very careful about what you do and where, and don't try this if you're not familiar with unix.

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