Paul on Tue, 10 Dec 2002 01:50:10 -0500


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Re: [PLUG] Copy Window harddrive using a Linux boot floppy?


The easy solution is something like "Ghost". Another method that I've used is to disable the swap file in Windows and use the file manager to drag and drop the complete contents of one drive to another.


Edward M. Corrado wrote:

On Fri, 6 Dec 2002, Paul wrote:



Yes, xcopy is slow because it moves files and directories instead of just bits and bytes. But, I believe the original post mentioned using either a Linux boot disk or M$ DOS.



Being the original poster, I did say something that suggested that I would be willing to use M$ DOS. At any rate, I ended up using "dd" instead of xcopy32 (which, at least in theory, should have copied the files and directory structure OK). My main probably with using dd was that the new disk was slightly smaller (something like 3.1 GB vs. 3.2 GB). However, as it turns out the M$ Windows drive had two partitions on it so I was able to get around this by creating two partitions on the new drive. The first one I made slightly bigger then the old first one (by something like 0.7 MB - I guess this is now wasted space). I then made the second partition on the new drive use the rest of the disk. Because of this, I couldn't use dd to do the whole drive (which would have been nice). I then used "dd" to just copy the first partition. The second partition didn't have anything but a few documents, so I just copied them by hand.

It would have been nice though if the size of the disks were the same (or
the new one was slightly bigger) so I could of just did a dd on the whole
thing. Over the winter break here, I need to change the software on a
whole computer lab (running M$ Win98, M$ Office, OpenOffice, Netscape
Navigator, IE, and a few other Applications), and it would be great if I
could just use dd on the whole disk. Luckily, I think all but 1 PC has the
same size disk (which is about 1 GB larger then the others). As long as I
don't use that disk for my "image" I should be OK. (I know I'll end up
wasting space on the larger disk, but in this case, I have more disk space
then I need, so it isn't a big deal.

Thank you for everyones suggestions!

Ed C.




gabriel rosenkoetter wrote:



On Fri, Dec 06, 2002 at 04:51:44PM -0500, Paul wrote:




xcopy doesn't care about the size of the new drive, as long as it has sufficient space.




Perhaps this got lost in the shuffle, but the original question
really was "how do I do this from a Linux boot disk", *not* "what's
the best way to do this".

In any case, "best" is pretty relative. Even accounting for
resizing, I'd be willing to wager that a good dd implementation
(like, say, Schily's) is both more reliable and faster than xcopy.





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_________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion -- http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug



_________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug