dd - cloning a disk.

[Andrew Pantyukhin]

On 3/11/06, Grant Peel <gpeel at thenetnow.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Here is a simple (I think!) question for the I/O savy among you:
>
> If I had two identical disks, say, 73 GB Seagate 10K SCSIs, one completely
> operational fully setup FreeBSD with all the trimmings, and the other blank,
> or perhaps loaded but no longer usable, is 'dd' and appropriate tool to
> completely clone the Good disk to the not so good disk....therefor making
> the second disk identical to the first? Bootable and all?

It is, with a few 'buts'. Firstly, the source should be mounted
read-only. Secondly, you should copy the drive device itself
(ie da0 to da1) instead of its partitions (ie da0c).