24 Apr
2006
24 Apr
'06
8:56 p.m.
My experience with Ghost is that if it doesn't understand the particular
file structure on the disk being copied that it will do a raw type of
copy. That is by partition. It can understand one partition (for
example) and deal with files and not understand a second partition and
do a raw copy of it. That is common on disks with hibernation
partitions that are specific to manufacturers.
Tom Uban wrote:
I have a pair of IDE hard drives and I want to do a
raw copy
from one to the other. I've tried a couple of different approaches
so far without much luck.
My first experiment was with linux where I created a PC linux
boot CD and hooked my two drives up planning to just dd from
one drive's raw device to the other. To my amazement, I discovered
that linux does not have a raw disk I/O capability by default.
I tried using the block devices, but the resulting copy was
not intact. After doing a bit of searching, I discovered that
there is some sort of rawio extension which allows a raw device
to be associated with a block device, but it also said that dd
would not work with this raw device due to buffer alignment
issues vs. DMA. Go figure...
My second attempt was with a NetBSD 3.0 install CD, exiting to
the shell and trying dd from rwd0a to rwd1a. I know that back
in the dark ages, this was possible, but apparently in these
modern times things have changed. When I try to do this I receive
a read only error on the /dev/rwd1a device. When the PC boots,
the wdX information goes by to quickly to read and the dmesg
command is not present on the install CD image.
Is what I want to do possible (anymore)? Do I have to resort
to purchasing Partition Magic or Ghost or something like that?
Do these programs even work on raw disks which have no file
system?
--tnx
--tom