Can I clone a whole drive to another drive using dd?

wh33t · 10-11-2022, 09:50 PM

Lets say I have 3 drives in my computer.

Lets say I have a Linux OS installed on all three drives, if I boot into drive 1, can I use command line dd to verbatim copy drive 2 to drive 3?

Also, would this still be possible if the drives are external and USB?

!!! · 10-11-2022, 10:55 PM

Identical size? Think about how dd works, and the block structure of a disk.

jefro · 10-11-2022, 10:55 PM

You might be able to.

Clone by dd is best when exact size drive and exact location is used.

wh33t · 10-11-2022, 11:37 PM

Yes, identical disk. I'll give it a go!

!!! · 10-11-2022, 11:59 PM

I don't understand the concept of:

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefro

...exact [same?] location is used.

How can any two things be in the same location? Maybe you mean ?container? (like two people being in the same room)?

Probably something n00bME doesn't know about the other 98% of Linux or the other 99.99% of computer technology...

Debian6to11 · 10-12-2022, 12:00 AM

From what I remember reading some time ago, it was identical or bigger.

pan64 · 10-12-2022, 01:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by !!!

I don't understand the concept of:

How can any two things be in the same location? Maybe you mean ?container? (like two people being in the same room)?

Probably something n00bME doesn't know about the other 98% of Linux or the other 99.99% of computer technology...

It means you copy from the beginning of the disk to the beginning of the disk. (so the copied data will be on the same location on the second disk).

Warning:
You cannot use both the original and the cloned disk in the same time, because the partitions will be identical. You might need to change uuids to make that work.

business_kid · 10-12-2022, 07:05 AM

I tried cloning disks (32G USB key to 32G USB key) with 0% success.

First of all, they weren't exactly the same, stuff was in slightly different places and those slight differences. If you bought two of the same disks from the same place on the same day, you'd be fine.

Clone the partitions, & Use rsync

biker_rat · 10-14-2022, 08:33 AM

rsync

business_kid · 10-14-2022, 10:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by biker_rat

rsync

Not that simple as it was a live usb. Normally, rsync is my tool of choice.

pan64 · 10-14-2022, 11:10 AM

rsync is not the ideal tool to clone a disk.

jefro · 10-14-2022, 03:34 PM

dd has been used by many people but there are limits.
There are plenty of other ways to clone drives like clonezilla.

What I meant about position is that if you clone sdb to sdd you may have to move the cloned drive to sdb. There are some enterprise distro's that suggest you make a drive generic so that when you do clone it and use it you then change all the unique properties.