Cloning Software to make identical copy
 

Hi

Is there software in the Linux world to make a clone of your system for backup purposes? I know in Window$ env there is but not in the open world of Linux.

Regards,
Shelton.

there is "parted" which is part of the system rescue cd

http://www.sysresccd.org/

Or just "dd", of course...

Shazam,

In case you are overwhelmed by these very terse (but nevertheless very truthful) answers:

In Windoze you cannot clone a disk because of numerous unnecessary limitations. Like you cannot acces the boot sector when running the GUI, you have to do that in DOS mode.(Wonder how this was solved in XP, btw which does not have a DOS mode, stopped using Windows after W2k) If you want you copy the system directory, the copy operation crashes after a few files, because many system files are in use and cannot be accessed (for read!!)

Anyway, you are perhaps confused since in Linux there are no such limitations and all tools are simply built in! (I recently cloned a running sound archive server to new hardware, the production server never went down, I even copied the MBR!)

If you want to make a real clone, including MBR etc, use dd. AwesomeMachine has written an understandable tutorial on dd on this forum. But be careful when trying to do this on dissimilar hard disks.

If you just want to copy the contents of partitions, use "cp -R -v -p -x"

Or use tar to create a single archive file. If you pipe the output of tar in another tar which just unpacks the archive you have your clone. If you are willing to read thru a 2246 line man page, find the star backup program and read the examples in the man page..

Or use rsync...

Heema is also right in suggesting parted

jlinkels

ok thanks for all the suggestions!

Regards,
Shelton.