Re: Using dd to copy a disk.
Greetings!
* Bret Comstock Waldow <bwaldow@alum.mit.edu> [2003-Jul-28 16:33 AKDT]:
> dd has never failed me. My situation is different than his, but I've
> used it extensively.
>
> I have a Thinkpad, and there's no cost effective way to backup up 20G.
> I bought a second, identical drive and a carrier to mount it in the
> extra drive bay, and I have backed up and restored my system for nearly
> two years with this method.
I don't know how this might help the original request, but folks using
'dd' to copy data around should look at 'partimage'. With 'dd' you're
copying the entire hard drive / partition, including all the places on
the disk where no meaningful information is written. 'partimage' is
similar to 'dd', except that it's smart about copying only the actual
data you care about. Dunno if it's familiar with more esoteric
filesystems, but it handles ext2 and NTFS with ease.
I use it all the time to copy a Windoze install (use a Promise
controller and you can turn a 6 hour Windoze install into a 20 minute
'partimage' process).
Take a look, YMMV, etc.
Chris
--
Christopher S. Swingley email: cswingle@iarc.uaf.edu
IARC -- Frontier Program Please use encryption. GPG key at:
University of Alaska Fairbanks www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle/
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