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Hmm....just a few minutes ago my hard-drive started making a "metal-on-metal" grinding sound and I had to do a cold reboot.
Its a relatively new one, only a 2 year old Seagate 80gb ide drive, and it looks like its on its last legs already.
I have a spare external 80gb hard-drive; so can anyone recommend a tool that will make an exact clone of my present drive to my backup one, so that if it does decide to go out with a bang, I can just pop the spare on into my computer and be on my way....
You can try something like "dd" which will make a bit for bit copy of your Linux drive to another Linux drive but it is slow as all hell and because it's bit for bit...you have to have an identical drive or something larger than the drive you're imaging since you're copying over un-used partitioned space.
Someone else can honestly post a better solution as I would also be interested.
I think the tool I last used was called "g4l" (Ghost For Linux).
I did something similar, backing up and entire linux install when I upgraded the HD in my laptop. I used tar and split(because I was going to NFS). Tar allows you to make a tarball of the entire directory structure, and then all you've gotta do is format the new HD the correct way. You can exclude directories from the tarball, stuff like /proc, maybe /dev depending on how your system is set up, and of course the directory the new drive is mounted at.
I was going to use dd, but partimage looks like a more senseable tool. one last thing about partimage: does the partition where I restore the image need to be exactly the same size/filesystem formatted as the original?
Generally, cloning SW is copying actual bit patterns and does not care about file systems. Think of it as a hierachy...At the lowest level is the raw device. Then you create partitions so that you can use specific zones to store data. Next, you create a filesystem that lives inside a partition.
Copy (clone) a partition and the filesystem goes with it.
Clone an entire drive and the partitions go with it.
If you do a method using dd, you should look into dd_rescue. It's very similar to dd, but it written to help with dying drives. It's saved my behind more than once.
If you do a method using dd, you should look into dd_rescue. It's very similar to dd, but it written to help with dying drives. It's saved my behind more than once.
Yep, just used dd_rescue this weekend. pulled an old P1 i had in the garage, booter DSL with the two hard-drives attached and the cloning went perfectly.
The hard-drive was not even allowing the bootloader to start, making a fast succession of loud clicking noises.
dd_rescue is definitely an app to keep at hand.
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