hi
I have jus used the dd command on to flash disks

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdc1
it did not return any errors

when I mount hdc1 I can see all the content similar to that of hda1 but when i try to boot I get the msg "missing operating system .

are you trying to boot the data you dumped to hdc1 ? Or do you now have issues booting your normal operating system?

am trying to boot from the new flash disk . The original flash disk boots ok

Is this a same make / model flash disk?

one thing i think is that dd does not write a MBR, which you may be missing... dunno but this could easily be why you are getting a no os error.

ezra143 is right on the money - when you have cloned a disk you still need to install a boot loader. Run grub-install /dev/hda or lilo, or whatever bootloader you use.

Håkan

dd doesn't copy the Master Boot Record (MBR) unless you ask it to.

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdc1 copies the first primary partition of /dev/hda, which is beyond the MBR.

In order to copy an MBR, use:

dd if=/dev/hda of=somefile bs=512 count=1

"somefile" could have been /dev/hdc, but I doubt that's what you want to do. If you're using lilo your lilo.conf file from /dev/hda1 may not be appropriate for /dev/hdc1 (I'm not sure how GRUB would be affected).

What I'd do in your situation is
- boot using your Slackware install disks
- mount /dev/hdc1 somewhere and edit any boot loader (GRUB or lilo) configuration files
- run lilo using chroot to write the MBR.
- Reboot and enjoy.

Lyle

Thanks guys but I still cant get it right .Now am getting the error msg
NO ROM BASIC System halted

Use fdisk to mark your root ("/") or boot ("/boot", if you have one) partition as active, that should solve that problem.

Håkan