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03 October 2005

Meta Tech Support Chat Can I copy the data, partitions and all, from one drive to another by doing some variant on `dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb', and if so, what variant? The drives are of different sizes (second larger than the first).

post by: kenko at: 20:44 | 5 comments

here.

see also.

posted by quonsar 03 October | 23:09

Yes.

Although, if you have the first drive mounted when you do the dd and then attempt to boot from the second drive, you'll find that the filesystems' dirty bit is set, and an fsck will occur.

You'll probably want a blocksize larger than the default, otherwise the copy will take fo-eva.

posted by tomierna 04 October | 00:21

Thanks, q!

posted by kenko 04 October | 02:01

Real men don't use fancy programs like 'dd' or 'tar' or 'cpio' written in fancy programming languages like C or assembly language.

Rather, they write all of their software on an as-needed basis in machine code, placing operating system calls directly on to the stack themselves.

But I have used 'dd' to do this. Ergo, I am not a real man.

It's nice not to have the copied drive mounted, so that nothing can change out from underneath you, if it is possible to bring the machine down.

posted by teece 04 October | 03:57

IN SOVIET RUSSIA THE CLONE ENSLAVES YOU!!

i love america!

IN SOVIET RUSSIA BLOC WILL MOUNT YOUR DIRTY BITS AND FSCK YOU!!

nyet! it is not joke!

IN SOVIET RUSSIA PARTISAN TABLE BOOTS YOU!!

what a country!

posted by Wedge 04 October | 03:59

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