cloning a harddrive with dd

cwc · 12-08-2016, 06:01 AM

I used :
dd if=/dev/sda of-/dev/sdb
to try to clone a harddrive with no luck grub would not load.
I'm running debain.

Please throw me a bone on what you have done to get this to work.

I saw this from http://unix.stackexchange.com/questi...om-hdd-to-hdd:

sudo dd if=/dev/sdb bs=128K | pv -s 3000G | sudo dd of=/dev/sdc bs=128K

pan64 · 12-08-2016, 06:10 AM

use dcfldd instead of dd if you want to see the progress. Do not need pv and pipe.
you gave insufficient information, please tell us a few words about what's happening: error message/whatever

linuxbird · 12-08-2016, 02:28 PM

I tend to use clonezilla and copy "offline." Clonezilla will help with the boot and partition information.

Are you restricted to using dd?

rtmistler · 12-08-2016, 03:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cwc

I used :
dd if=/dev/sda of-/dev/sdb
to try to clone a harddrive with no luck grub would not load.
I'm running debain.

Please throw me a bone on what you have done to get this to work.

I saw this from http://unix.stackexchange.com/questi...om-hdd-to-hdd:

sudo dd if=/dev/sdb bs=128K | pv -s 3000G | sudo dd of=/dev/sdc bs=128K

What you're doing should absolutely work, providing you type it correctly. Based on the command you cited as your primary example, it should be:

Code:

$ sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

Have you used sudo when you've done the command? Are you sure the input is /dev/sda and the output is /dev/sdb? That's all you need. You can opt to add a bs=10M to that command, I usually don't.

Doug G · 12-08-2016, 04:36 PM

I don't know if this is off-topic or not, but recent Fedora versions of dd offer status=progress option to show progress, without needing pv or USR1 signal.

jefro · 12-08-2016, 10:00 PM

Notes,

You can't clone live media with dd usually. Boot to some cd or usb and then find correct drives to copy from and to.

dd command copies exactly and is mainly useful on exact disk to exact disk and exact position of disk in some cases. Generally before you clone using grub you may have to make grub and other drive and maybe network settings to a generic form otherwise you'll have to correct later.

Not sure the clone operation worked correctly either.