"dd" question

[Mike Hunter]

On May 03 at 14:11, "Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC" wrote:

> I have a Windows machine that also has some linux partitions.  lilo  
> is the main boot manager.  Can I used dd from my freebsd box to  
> completely copy the whole disk, partition tables and all, to another  
> disk?  The disk in the machine is starting to appear to be a little  
> flaky and I have another of the same mechanisms here and would like  
> to just basically clone the whole thing over.  I seldom use the  
> machine but when I do need it I need it (tax time, an old website  
> that uses a specific windows tool for updating, etc)

I've done this and had success.  You can boot the machine that you want to
dupe with a live CD, then dd from the disk to either a file somewhere or
straight to another disk, then you should be able to just boot from the
new disk (the new disk must be >= the size of the old disk, people have
said that the exact same size is required, but I haven't found that to be
the case.)

A couple other quick plugs, check out ddrecover if you have bad sectors.
Last but not least, I've used netcat with success to do these dupes across
a (secure) network.

Mike