I was wondering how I could make a clone or image of my computer hard disk that contains debian OS. I want to do this in order to make an exact copy toanother clean pc with no os at all. What complete free software can I use for this ? Is there a manual some where on the net about this ? thanksdd (man dd) doesn't work for you ? Or are you looking for something else ?
dd will work as long as you have boot media to access compatible hardware to perform the reverse dd cloning operation.
Boot from CD media and get to a shell prompt and have hard drive hda with your linux system on it and an operational tape drive linked to /dev/tape. Then you can create a clone via:
dd bs=512 if=/dev/hda of=/dev/tape Then replace hda with another drive and restore the clone via: dd bs=512 if=/dev/tape of=/dev/hdaTo work with varying drive sizes and types, a commercial product like BackupEdge makes the process simpler.