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Not recommended. If your source disk is written to while the copy is running then your destination copy will end up being inconsistent/corrupt.
Also, if the disks/partitions you're copying from/to aren't exactly the same size, you may also run into problems using dd in this way. Not to mention having to deal with duplicate UUIDS and what have you.
I can't give you any hard/fast reasons why, but I have had problems trying to clone a mounted fs. Gazl's explanation sounds logical enough. I use rsync to copy partitions to a backup USB HDD, but have never been able to rsync a mounted partition. I use what I call a "recovery partition" (see my blog). You could also use a live CD.
Regards,
Bill
Last edited by TSquaredF; 07-24-2009 at 10:54 AM.
Reason: Gazl got in before I did.
Well what I'm trying to do is copy a Linux reiserfs formatted disk to another, then I'm going to try to run off the copied disk. The problem is that I only have one system running, no way to run a live distro because it's on a mainframe. I have four disks I need to copy and then run the system from those copies.
Does anyone have suggestions? DD was really the only solution I saw to fit my needs.
Haha that's exactly the tutorial I'm using! When I use DFDSS to copy the FS format is not recognized. And the first suggestion is under the assumption that I have two running systems. I only have one. I can put the root disk into read-only when I boot it? Is this a kernel parameter I can pass?
I figured this out. You can't just copy over to an unformatted pack. It must be formatted for Linux, then copied. I figured that it would just raw copy over bit by bit and "become" formatted. I was wrong. So format your packs first people!
I have two identical hard drives and have used dd to copy everything from 1 to the other then pulled the old one out and used the install cd to fix lilo if needed.
I have always done this on a running system, i am not saying its a good idea but it worked for me.
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