questions about using dd command for cloning a drive
 

I have 2 80GB drives in my Dell Poweredge SC1430 webserver, set up as RAID, with Ubuntu 8.04LTS installed. Everything is running properly. I want to clone what the system sees as sda1 onto a drive that I have connected via a usb external enclosure.It is also an 80GB drive.

I have read and printed the instructions on "How to clone your bootable Ubuntu install to another drive" posted at http://www.arsgeek.com/2008/01/22/ho...another-drive/.

My questions are about the dd command. ‘dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdb1 conv=noerror,sync’. The machine I am cloning is a production web server. 1)Is there any danger in running the dd command while leaving the web server active? 2)Do I need to format the output drive before running the dd command?

Thanks!

I recommend you download and use CLONEZILLA. It's a very easy to use application. Good Luck.

I was hoping to be able to do this without taking my webserver down. Obviously, booting from a Clonezilla cd would entail taking my webserver down. Is there some reason you do not recommend using dd?

I see, I always use Clonezilla to clone my HDs, even the servers. can't you bring your server down for about 1 hour or more? (depending on how much data you have there).
I tried using the DD command once and I think (don't remember) gave me an error message that a file was being used by another process and I had to use Clonezilla to clone it.

Thanks. That answers my question about being able to clone a disk while it is live. I will try Clonezilla over the weekend.