precaud wrote:I've been using Ghost for cloning hard drives, but learned a couple days ago that it does not in fact make an exact "duplicate". It doesn't copy MBR or boot sector. I want a utility that will exactly duplicate one drive onto an identical one.
Have anything that you like that does this?
All tools are capable of copying MBR/boot sector, but keep on mind that MBR is only copied when you do an entire disk copy (opposed to copying only a partition).
The most exact copy would be using dd in any Unix variant.
precaud wrote:Bonus points for small and runs from a DOS boot floppy.
The only one that I know for sure that fits in only one floppy is Norton Ghost. Some mini Linux distributions can run from a pair of disks, but you'll have to do the imaging by yourself (i.e.: not GUI for that). If you don't mind booting from CD or USB, you could use Acronis True Image or Clonezilla.
Clonezilla can be told to copy EVERYTHING, and can use the dd approach to do so.
krcroft wrote:Warlord wrote:you understand that your hard drives have to be... the same manufacturer and model number.
<snip>
This is not true. The target drive simply has to be the same or larger than the source, to ensure a verbatim copy from the 0th byte to the "end" byte of the source block device.
Geometry DOES matter (number of cylinders/head/sectors), specially when dealing with old OSs or HDDs. If you try to restore an image into a disk that have different number of heads, some OSs will get confused and won't boot.
In disks that use LBA that's not a problem (provided that BIOS accesses it as LBA, not a CHS translation), nor in OSs that doesn't use the BIOS to access the disk (Linux, after boot). That's one of the reason to make "intelligent copies" (storing only size of partition and the files, instead the entire partition block by block)... you can reconstruct the filesystem in a partition suited to your device geometry.
krcroft wrote:Yup; that's key - figuring out your source and target. After that, for people new to DD wanting to backup their entire physical HDD, they also need to pick the top-level block device as opposed numbered partitions.
cat /proc/partitions
I prefer to use fdisk -l. Keep in mind that in linux..
- /dev/sdx/ and /dev/hdx are disk devices (i.e.: /dev/hda, /dev/sdc). In older distributions PATA devices (including drives connected with a SATA to PATA adapters) used to be /dev/hdx, but they changed to /dev/sdx on later versions.
- /dev/mmcblkn (i.e.: /dev/mmcblk0) are usually eMMC devices, or SD cards through integrated readers (like in laptops). Note that any flash card connected through USB readers will use the /dev/sdx/ notation.
- /dev/srn (i.e.: /dev/sr0) are CD/DVD/BD recorders. You can safely ignore this devices (fdisk should have done it for you).
Partitions are usually the same but finished in a number. Some examples would be:
- /dev/hda2: Second partition from first PATA (IDE) disk.
- /dev/sdb1: First partition from second PATA, SATA or USB disk.
- /dev/mmcblk0p1: First partition from a SD card or eMMC disk. Note that 'p' hanging around.
Does it sound complex? At least we don't have to talk to things like c0t0d2s3 like in other Unix variations...
I have traveled across the universe and through the years to find Her.
Sometimes going all the way is just a start...
I'm selling some stuff!