compress os software backup images?

[ilovemyjoggler]

I have got all my os images backed up to my laptop. I'm now really short on space. I've got nowhere else to move them to. I've tried to compress them but I don't seem to be able to get it to work on either windows own zip or 7zip. Some of the backups are of 8g usbs (huge)...maybe this is why? (I'm new to compressing with 7zip so maybe I'm doing something wrong).

Is there anything I can do to shrink these? I really don't want to delete them...

[pete]

I have only zipped a few files/images but it doesn't really do much.

I use GParted and shrink down the image then do a back up of the "shrunken" partition...will do a test and post it here to make sure what I just wrote above work.

You can temporarily boot an Ubuntu fix it OS off of a USB stick or ISO on your laptop or use an Ubuntu boot stick running on the Joggler.

[hawsey]

How about just having an external drive dedicated to Joggler (and rasp pi in my case ) stuff .
I got an old drive out of a BT vision box and a cheap external enclosure off eBay for my images .
I put them on to my desktop in a folder and every now and then put them all on to the HDD .
Lots of things have HDDs that would do the job ,old sky boxes ,broken laptops etc ...
Just an idea , but I would agree don't delete them ...

[ilovemyjoggler]

Thanks guys.

I think this

How about just having an external drive dedicated to Joggler stuff

may be the easiest way to solve my issue. My laptop only had a 100g memory (now there's virtually nothing left) so even shrunken images will probably eat into that meagre allowance.

I got an old drive out of a BT vision box and a cheap external enclosure off eBay for my images. Lots of things have HDDs that would do the job ,old sky boxes ,broken laptops etc ..

Interesting. I've never been at the innards of a laptop so I'm assuming the harddrive has a usb port and therefore this is any easy procedure???

[pete]

so I'm assuming the harddrive has a usb port

No. But you can buy the raw USB cable to a hard drive connector. The Hard drive for a laptop is either IDE or SATA. Mostly SATA these days.

My early Jogglers used a USB to ZIF cable to SSD; tiny things; put them inside of the Joggler.

Here is just a USB cable with a hard drive connector. Note that you also need to power the hard drive with a 2nd cable / connector.



I like these little ones that I use all of the time. Very portable.



The standard for laptop hard drives today is larger than just a few years ago. You can find new hard drives which are old stock with 120, 240, 500 Gb for as little as $40 USD on ebay. You just have to look to make sure they are new and not refurbished.

I use one of these to install a new hard drive in my laptop. Easy as telling your computer to image your current hard drive to the new one. I then turn off the computer an swap hard drives. You can use the "free" Mini Tools partition manager to do this.

[hawsey]

Do Mr ilovemyjoggler , if you want to do this going down the recycling / cheap route using an old laptop HDD you can buy an enclosure like Pete suggested above failing that a quick post on your local freecycle group should procure you an old BT vision or sky box with a HDD enclosed a couple of screws away .

[hawsey]

so Mr ilovemyjoggler , if you want to do this going down the recycling / cheap route using an old laptop HDD you can buy an enclosure like Pete suggested above failing that a quick post on your local freecycle group should procure you an old BT vision or sky box with a HDD enclosed a couple of screws away .

[ilovemyjoggler]

Pete and Hawsey, thank you. I will certainly be scavenging!