using dd to copy my freebsd partion to another drive

[Jack L. Stone]

At 12:05 PM 5.25.2003 -0400, D Velez wrote:
>Hi, I would like to know what would be the best
>block size to use when using the dd command.
>I read many web pages on how to use the dd
>command, but all have different block sizes
>and I am confuse. I see some as bs=512 bs=1024
>bs=8192, etc....
>
>Is there a way to calculate the block size of the
>two hard drives myself or is there a standard
>block size to use for any hard drive, cdrom and floppy.
>
>I appreciate your help
>
>Thanks
>
>David V
>

This has been discussed quite a bit on the list. Here's one of those that
should help you see what your computer wants according to the I/O:

The obvious intention is to minimize the number of transfers, so
theoretically the larger the transfer, the better.  The maximum I/O
transfer size is limited to the value of MAXPHYS, which is defined in
sys/param.h:

  #ifndef MAXPHYS
  #define MAXPHYS		(128 * 1024)	/* max raw I/O transfer size */
  #endif

The ATA subsystem uses this value.  SCSI drives were limited to 60 kB
transfers, though this could have changed.  I don't currently have any
machine with SCSI disks connected, so I can't confirm that.  A way to find
is to run a command like

sageame at sagec$ dd if=/dev/ad0c of=/dev/null bs=128k &
sageame at sagec$ top -I

  dd if=/dev/ad0c of=/dev/null bs=128k &

and in the background do an 'iostat ad0 1'.  Here's an example with an
IDE drive:

  === grog at zaphod (/dev/ttyp0) ~ 3 -> iostat ad0 1
        tty             ad0             cpu
   tin tout  KB/t tps  MB/s  us ni sy in id
     0    3  5.19   7  0.03  11  0  4  1 84
     0  126 127.36 183 22.74   0  0  6  2 92
     0   44 128.00 190 23.76   0  0  2  0 98
     0   44 128.00 191 23.89   0  0  5  0 95
     0   44 128.00 191 23.88   0  0  7  1 92

As you can see, it's really doing 128 kB transfers, for an average transfer
rate of almost 24 MB/s.

Best regards,
Jack L. Stone,
Administrator

SageOne Net
http://www.sage-one.net
jackstone at sage-one.net