LITTLEBLACKDOG.COM

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2007 12:28 pm Post subject: Disk Cloning wanted

I'm looking for something to clone one disk to another... what I currently have apparently can't read a Linux drive. (DriveXML, I believe it's called, won't read all the Linux partitions and rebuild the drive correctly.)

It can run on Windows or Linux.

I'd like something someone has experience with, was good, and is of course free -- if at least for a trial period Wink

And from googling, I just run into products that I must pay to use -- someone must be using something free that's good.

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2007 12:49 pm Post subject:

You might try BootItNG (a boot manager with partitioning and imaging software built in).

I've used BootItNG (although admittely just with FAT32 and NTFS partitions - but supposedly they do support linux partitions like Ext2/3), or alternatively, they have Imaging standalone software packages (same site) called Image For Windows and Image for Linux.

FWIW, you can use BootItNG on a "trial" basis (I think for 30 days or something). But I use it as my main boot manager as well as partitioning software, as well as imaging software (for backups). It's well worth the $35 cost.

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2007 1:35 pm Post subject:

Try out DD. it's stable & been around forever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_(Unix)

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2007 3:13 pm Post subject:

I second DD. I have used that so many times I've lost count. Makes a perfect bit by bit copy of the drive. I'm my case I'm usually cloning a smaller drive onto a bigger one, so I'll use DD to do the cloning, then use partition magic to resize to take advantage of the full drive.

You can even just boot off a Live CD and run it that way, no need to take up a machine with a full linux install if you don't want. There's also a windows version I believe.

You can use it to copy an entire drive, boot table and all, or individual partitions, down to individual blocks if you want to get technical with it.

if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb

For example will copy an entire IDE drive to a different IDE drive.

if=/dev/hda of=/dev/sda

Would do IDE to SCSI, etc. Just gotta make sure you know what your drives are before you start copying.

And since it's bit by bit it doesn't matter what the format is. NTFS, Fat, ext3, it doesn't care.

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2007 3:35 pm Post subject:

Sweet new toys to try out Smile

I have a full linux install, and a few live linuc CD's floating around, I'll give DD a try. It mentioned IBM JCL in its notes, so, that's always fun.