Clone 200GB Linux Harddisk

Any advice to clone a 8-partition harddisk (all Linux partitions)?
Pls kindly show me specific commands which can be useful.

Any MS Windows program to clone Linux harddisk?

Highly appreciated if you can reply by email as well.
Thanks a lot.
--------------------------------
My Email: klistsmith@hotmail.com

Klist Smith wrote:

> Any advice to clone a 8-partition harddisk (all Linux partitions)?

Connect source disk as "Primary, Master" and destination disk as "Primary,
Slave". Then issue the following command:

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=4k

It will take some time, but you will get exact copy. This ofcourse assumes,
that the disks are identical (size, geometry).

Regards,
--
Jaroslaw Zachwieja
GPG/PGP key at http://pgp.mit.edu
foo1 w adresie to podpucha :)

>Any advice to clone a 8-partition harddisk (all Linux partitions)?
What is it that you are trying to accomplish? If you want to reinstall
an OS, in most distros, you have the option to mount a partition
without formatting. If you can elaborate on your desired end result,
a proper solution will be easier to provide.

The purpose is to make exact duplicate of a source harddisk which
contains 8 partitions.

I just want to duplicate it for parallel testing.
Hope to hear your advice. Thanks.

jamie@nospam.com wrote:
>>Any advice to clone a 8-partition harddisk (all Linux partitions)?
>
> What is it that you are trying to accomplish? If you want to reinstall
> an OS, in most distros, you have the option to mount a partition
> without formatting. If you can elaborate on your desired end result,
> a proper solution will be easier to provide.

The purpose is to make exact duplicate of a source harddisk which
contains 8 partitions.

I just want to duplicate it for parallel testing.
Hope to hear your advice. Thanks.

jamie@nospam.com wrote:
>>Any advice to clone a 8-partition harddisk (all Linux partitions)?
>
> What is it that you are trying to accomplish? If you want to reinstall
> an OS, in most distros, you have the option to mount a partition
> without formatting. If you can elaborate on your desired end result,
> a proper solution will be easier to provide.

The purpose is to make exact duplicate of a source harddisk which
contains 8 partitions.

I just want to duplicate it for parallel testing.
Hope to hear your advice. Thanks.

jamie@nospam.com wrote:
>>Any advice to clone a 8-partition harddisk (all Linux partitions)?
>
> What is it that you are trying to accomplish? If you want to reinstall
> an OS, in most distros, you have the option to mount a partition
> without formatting. If you can elaborate on your desired end result,
> a proper solution will be easier to provide.

Now I have a new harddisk of the same model. How can I make exact
partition structure in the new harddisk?

Read the structure in the old harddisk and create it one by one in the
new harddisk?

Regards,

Jaroslaw Zachwieja wrote:

> Klist Smith wrote:
>
>
>>Any advice to clone a 8-partition harddisk (all Linux partitions)?
>
>
> Connect source disk as "Primary, Master" and destination disk as "Primary,
> Slave". Then issue the following command:
>
> dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=4k
>
> It will take some time, but you will get exact copy. This ofcourse assumes,
> that the disks are identical (size, geometry).
>
> Regards,

On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 12:52:53 +0800, Klist Smith wrote:

> Now I have a new harddisk of the same model. How can I make exact
> partition structure in the new harddisk?
>
> Read the structure in the old harddisk and create it one by one in the
> new harddisk?
>
> Regards,
>
> Jaroslaw Zachwieja wrote:
>
>> Klist Smith wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Any advice to clone a 8-partition harddisk (all Linux partitions)?
>>
>>
>> Connect source disk as "Primary, Master" and destination disk as "Primary,
>> Slave". Then issue the following command:
>>
>> dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=4k
>>
>> It will take some time, but you will get exact copy. This ofcourse assumes,
>> that the disks are identical (size, geometry).
>>
>> Regards,

The advice Jaroslaw Zachwieja gave is exactly what you want. You don't
have to set up the partition structure or anything. "dd" works at a lower
abstraction level than that. It copies the raw bits directly from one
drive to the other, this includes, MBR, partition tables, and anything
else (including garbage from deleted files) that is one it.

The only way I can imagine that it would fail would be if you had really
old drives that didn't hide bad blocks behind a firmware level. That is
really unlikely. (In that case you would have to avoid using bad blocks on
the disk copied to.) (Even if the disks aren't identical, it still might
work. Though there is no guarantee, and the destination disk must be large
enough to receive whatever you write to it.)

--
Thomas D. Shepard
I am sorry, but you can't email me.
ImaSpammer@spam.sux is not a real email address. I figure if someone wants to
harvest an email address to use for sending spam, they may as well use this one.

"Thomas D. Shepard" <ImaSpammer@spam.sux> wrote in message
news:pan.2005.03.03.06.41.36.292328@spam.sux...
> On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 12:52:53 +0800, Klist Smith wrote:
>
>> Now I have a new harddisk of the same model. How can I make exact
>> partition structure in the new harddisk?
>>
>> Read the structure in the old harddisk and create it one by one in the
>> new harddisk?
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Jaroslaw Zachwieja wrote:
>>
>>> Klist Smith wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Any advice to clone a 8-partition harddisk (all Linux partitions)?
>>>
>>>
>>> Connect source disk as "Primary, Master" and destination disk as
>>> "Primary,
>>> Slave". Then issue the following command:
>>>
>>> dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=4k
>>>
>>> It will take some time, but you will get exact copy. This ofcourse
>>> assumes,
>>> that the disks are identical (size, geometry).
>>>
>>> Regards,
>
> The advice Jaroslaw Zachwieja gave is exactly what you want. You don't
> have to set up the partition structure or anything. "dd" works at a lower
> abstraction level than that. It copies the raw bits directly from one
> drive to the other, this includes, MBR, partition tables, and anything
> else (including garbage from deleted files) that is one it.

dd is usually a very, very foolish way to copy such a large disk. It will in
some cases copy bad blocks, it will take forever, and if you have even
slight differences in disk geometries such as the new disk being a few
blocks smaller, it will corrupt your file system. Remember that dd copies
every block, and will also copy the blocks that are discarded and contain
nothing you want.

You might try copying the first 10 blocks to get the partition tables, then
duplicate the file systems by using mkfs to create new file systems and
using cp -a or rsync to duplicate the contents to the new disks. It takes
time and knowledge to set up, but it is easily 100 times faster than
byte-copying a 200 Gig disk.

Klist Smith wrote:
> Any advice to clone a 8-partition harddisk (all Linux partitions)?
> Pls kindly show me specific commands which can be useful.
>
> Any MS Windows program to clone Linux harddisk?
>
> Highly appreciated if you can reply by email as well.
> Thanks a lot.

There was a google advert next to your message:
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...l?ad=A01010311
I know nothing about it, but it does have a free trial download!