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Re: Clone a hard drive

On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 1:00 AM, ekh@hubsphoto.com <ekh@hubsphoto.com> wrote:
> I just learned something neat.
>
> A simple way to clone a drive (/dev/sda) (C:) to another drive attached to
> this system (/dev/sdb) (D:) is to use dd command.
>
> dd if=/dev/sda  of=/dev/sdb
>
> This command will copy each bit from sda (Master drive) to sdb (Slave drive)
> including MBR (Master Boot record). Thus after cloning new drive (sdb) is
> ready for deployment. This will also copy any information like File System
> IDs etc.

Mostly correct.  In addition, dd will also copy the drive geometry,
which you probably don't want, unless you have an *identical* drive.
That is, both drives being the same size isn't enough.

> I did this while booted in my Ubuntu OS on the sda drive.  The sda drive has
> Ubuntu and Windows XP on it.  I'll bet this would also work if you only had
> Windows on your drive and booted into Linux using a Live Linux CD.  It takes
> a long time but it works.

You probably don't want to copy from a drive that is mounted
read/write.  You might want to consider using a LiveCD instead or
something like Clonezilla.

Regards,
- Robert

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