[ILUG] hard disk imaging

[Liam Bedford]

On Fri, Sep 21, 2001 at 12:36:21PM +0100, Oliver Ryan came forth with:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'd like to make a copy (image) of a hard disk (10GB) running RH Linux
> and transfer it to a new hard drive. What's the best way of doing this? 
> I've heard of Norton Ghost and Drive Image to create an image of the
> original disk, but these have to be bought.
> 
depends on what you want to do. If you can have both the drives in the
machine at the same time, then just recreate the partition scheme on the
second drive, and use tar
(I always end up messing this up, but something like
tar -cpX /tmp/exclude  f - / | (cd /mnt && tar xvpf -)
where /tmp/exclude has
/mnt/
/proc/

but try this first).

dd will do the job, but you'll be left with an image, so if the drive is
bigger, you may not be able to use the spare space (there is information in
the MBR that will be transferred).

If the geometry of the new drive is significantly different, you may also
find the boot sector won't work.
Make sure you have a boot floppy handy :)

L.
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