How to backup Windows NTFS partitions before upgrading

Jephe Wu - http://linuxtechres.blogspot.com

Objective: Upgrade Windows 2000 sp4 standalone server to Windows 2003 server standard edition, in case of failure, we are still able to restore back to Windows 2000 server
Environment: Windows 2000 sp4 server, Dell PowerEdge 2450 server, 10G basic NTFS partition for C drive with 5G free space
Tools needed for backup NTFS partition: RIP(Recovery Is Possible) CD 12.3 non-X edition - http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/

Steps:
1. boot up with RIP non-X 12.3 CD, choose the second option which is without keyborad mapping,login as root without password.
If you need to do it remotely,start up ssh by running /usr/sbin/sshd, then 'passwd root' to give root password

2. connect a external 300G hard disk with USB cable, we are going to backup C drive to external hard disk

3. mount external hard disk ntfs partition as read/write under RIP Linux
mount.ntfs-3g /dev/sdc1 /mnt/usb
ntfsclone -s - /dev/sda2 | gzip -c | cat > /mnt/usb/jephe.sda2.gz

4. backup mbr of /dev/sda
dd if=/dev/sda count=1 bs=512 of=/mnt/usb/jephe.dd.mbr

5. in case of failure for upgrade, you can restore mbr and C drive back
dd if=/mnt/usb/jephe.dd.mbr of=/dev/sda
gzip -dc /mnt/usb/jephe.sda2.gz | ntfsclone -r - -O /dev/sda2

6. If you need to backup C drive and MBR to network server through ssh connection, please refer to article
Cloning Windows server - using RIP and ntfsclone
at http://linuxtechres.blogspot.com/2007/07/cloning-windows-server-using-rip-and.html

7. While Windows 2000 server is running, as an administrator in the I386 directory on the Windows 2003 CD run Winnt32.exe and follow the prompts.