best approach to clone a disk?

[Joe Auty]

On Feb 15, 2006, at 10:51 AM, Steve Quinn wrote:

> --- Joe Auty <joe at netmusician.org> wrote:
>
>> Thanks Steve,
>>
>> These were the exact instructions I started with, only on a different
>> page....
>>
>> The problem with these for me is that dump caused a core dump. I've
>> been trying to run dump while booted up from a Freesbie CD, but I was
>> getting "unknown file system" errors I didn't know how to deal with.
>>
>> I'm going to try g4u next, but I'm surprised that what I originally
>> thought would be a simple task has turned out to be such an amazing
>> chore =(
>>
>>
>
> Hi Joe
>
> Have you tried booting the system you want to clone into single  
> user mode and running dump fron
> that file system?  This would guarantee that dump understands the  
> file system
>
> Attached is my script if you want to give it a go
>
> Before you do anything though, I suggest making a full disk G4U backup
>
> Dont forget to zero out any empty blocks
>
> I do this under the operating system prior to G4U to guarantee any  
> unused blocks are zero'd
>
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/zerobits bs=1024k
> rm /zerobits
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/zerobits bs=1024k
> rm /tmp/zerobits
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/usr/zerobits bs=1024k
> rm /usr/zerobits
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/zerobits bs=1024k
> rm /var/zerobits
>
> I hope this helps
>



Thanks Steve, but this is exactly the same script I've been using all  
along, while in Single User Mode.

However, could you explain the zeroing of blocks, and what its  
purpose is for? Does this solve the problem of space being lost when  
cloning a disk to a larger disk?









-----------
Joe Auty
NetMusician: web publishing software for musicians
http://www.netmusician.org
joe at netmusician.org