Make Image of Hard Drive

[Kövesdán Gábor]

Phusion wrote:

>I recently built a FreeBSD server, and was wondering how I can make an
>image of the hard drive. I am going to build an another FeeBSD server
>using identical hardware. How can I make an image of the hard drive of
>the original server I built and copy/install it to the new server?
>Each server has a 6.4 GB hard drive. Is there a way I can create an
>image then install via the network to a new server in the future if
>need be? Let me know.
>
There is the dd command. You can make a copy into a file in the 
following way:

dd if=/dev/ad0s1a of=/usr/home/you/backup

(ad0s1a is your partition that You want to backup, and the backup goes 
to the /usr/home/you/backup file.)
Transfer the backup to the another machine and type:

dd if=/path/to/backup of=/dev/ad0s1a

It is very simple and straightforward. The if option always refers to 
the input and the of refers to the output. See dd(1) for further info.

There is an another utility made for complete partition backups, called 
dump. See: dump(8).

Cheers,

Gábor Kövesdán