How do you duplicate a drive?

[Remko Lodder]

Matt Staroscik wrote:
> 
> I have a RAID mirror (2x 160GB) which I would like to back up onto a 
> spare 160GB drive.
> 
> I do not have a hot-swap caddy so I was planning on powering down the 
> system to get the backup drive in and out.
> 
> But once I have the new blank drive in, what is the best way to 
> duplicate the RAID? Ideally I would like to create a disk that could 
> boot the system (and rebuild the RAID) in case disaster strikes.
> 
> Can dd do this?
> 
> I am new to Unix disk operations... Many thanks in advance for the help.
> 

I think that dd if=/dev/<raiddisk> of=/dev/<newdisk> would work in 
duplicating the entire raid disk. I don't know if there are better ways, 
so if someone knows them, we would like to know ;)

Cheers!

-- 
Kind regards,

Remko Lodder                   |remko at elvandar.org
Reporter DSINet                |remko at dsinet.org
Projectleader Mostly-Harmless  |remko at mostly-harmless.nl
Founder Tienervaders           |remko at tienervaders.org