OT! OT! Hard Drive Cloning

[Keith R. Williams]

I've got both C and D in removable trays,setup as masters. Every once in a
while I use XXCOPY to 'clone C to D.

Good grief *NO*! THese utilities dont' keep the LFN/SFN links
coherent. Get some *real* repartitioning software line
PartitionMagic!

Having the drives in trays means I can pullout D ,put into C's place and be
'up and running' in 5 minutes or less.
This system has been in use for about 6 years.

You're *very* lucky. Don't do this at home!

 

[Keith R. Williams]

I've used Drive Image for the last few years, making a new image of the
primary drive on a removable drive frequently, and it has worked well for
me. On two occasions I used the last image to save my butt. Being able to
replace all of the files as well as the OS saved me days of work.

Partition Magic is far more flexible and works just as well for
this application.

 

[Keith R. Williams]

Before I dumped the MS O/S for Linux, I always set up the partitions
with fdisk formatted the new disk and used xcopy (all after booting to
DOS from Windows).

Doesn't work.

I've heard that ghost is pretty good.

I've heard the same, though Partion Magic is far more
flexible/useful.

 

[Dave Baker]

I have my system setup this way too...works great and in the event of a
total loss, you are back up and running in moments....I use Norton Ghost
2003 and it copies at about 1.8 gig a minute......Ross

I had a 6 GB drive partitioned into 2 partitions, one with Win98 (1 GB) & one
with WinXP (5 GB), with a dual boot facility.

I just migrated the whole lot across to a new 30 GB hard drive, and Ghost
2003 happily did the lot in less than 15 minutes of my time, even resizing my
partitions to 5 GB & 25 GB automatically (but allowing me to change them).
Dual boot functionality was preserved. All very easy.

Dave

 

[Ralph Wade Phillips]

Howdy!

Use XXcopy. Blows Norton Ghost away. And it is free.

For certain things, yes. For others, no.

They do not directly compete with each other.

And, add for your consideration - how do you get XXCOPY to clone an
NTFS partition?

Plus - make that "free for personal usage under certain
restrictions." More on their web page at http://www.xxcopy.com for those
interested.

RwP - who owns a 5 user license for XXCOPY and uses it about once
every other day ...

 

[[email protected]]

PowerQuest Drive Image is an excellent choice.

It once was. 7.0 is crap though. So is 7.1.

If I had more time I'd get in the details, that
will be probably later this week.

Billy Y..

 

[Russell Shaw]

I didn't write that, but i agree.

Perhaps it should be, but it isn't always. On the other hand, things that
shold be trivial in any OS -- like getting all applications to add
themselves to a standardized 'start' menu regardless of which window manager
is in use, or having all applications start with a user's (or Bill Gate's!)
global choice for a command like 'Copy' to be Ctrl+C rather than starting
with different defaults (Alt+C, Ctrl+C, etc.) -- isn't in Linux (...but it
certainly is in Windows).

Debian automatically adds all installations to the main menu regardless
of window manager. I still arrange my own menu so that things are grouped
according to importance. The alternatives system in debian allows any editor
or compiler to be invoked by the same command, if you want it to.

But a more serious question now that we're done with our pissing match...
can Linux-sans-3rd-part-tools deal with:

1) Copying the partition that contains the operating system itself -- in its
entirety -- to another drive? This is what trips up Windows -- various
system files such as the registry are being held open while the OS is
running, hence then can't be copied with a trivial 'copy' command.

Windoze kind of gluez itself to the hardware to make copying difficult.
In linux, you can just cp -a to a new disk on all the main top level
directories of a running system, which is the equivalent of using xcopy
in dos. A few directories you just create empty (such as /proc) because
the duplicate OS fills them in. Finally, run lilo to make the new disk
bootable. There's various ways of doing that step, but it's a 5s job.

If you use dd to copy a partition, the new disk should be bootable
immediately.

2) Copying the partition to a differently sized one (or, equivalently,
resizing partitions)? This is also the usual scenario a user finds
themselves in -- they buy a newer, bigger hard drive (because the old one is
full!) and want to copy everything but simply have the excess space left
over to keep expanding into. Windows won't resize partitions without data
loss, but many 3rd party tools will perform the data copy and partition
resize trick all in one fell swoop.

IIRC, there's a linux app to resize partitions without data loss. However,
you need it that infrequently that it's just easier to connect the new HDD
to the cable, format, partition, create filesystems, mount it on /mnt, then
cp -a everything onto it (except /proc, /mnt, etc). You could use dd, but
i don't know what happens to the extra space if you copy onto a larger drive.
By using cp -a, any bad blocks are avoided.

 

[Daniel Haude]

["Followup-To:" header set to sci.electronics.design.]
On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 19:32:39 +1100,

cp -a everything onto it (except /proc, /mnt, etc).

^

Note the absence of a slash before 'etc'--that's important ;-)

--Daniel

 

[Keith R. Williams]

That's newer to PM than any version I've got lying around. It's a nice
feature addition, but it kind of eliminates the need for PQ's DriveCopy or
DriveImage programs for most home users.

It's been there since 1.0. It works differently than PQDI or Drive
Copy (useless), but it's in there.

BTW: Has anybody had any experience dealing with tech support or sales
since Symantec finished assimilating PQ back in December?

Good luck!

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

Good grief *NO*! THese utilities dont' keep the LFN/SFN links
coherent. Get some *real* repartitioning software line
PartitionMagic!

XCOPY does copy LFNs if you run it in a window rather than boot DOS. I
don't know about XXCOPY, but is there a problem with XCOPY's handling of
LFNs?

I use XCOPY on my system just to make backups of data folders. I agree
that neither is any good for making a complete copy of a windows system
partition.

 

[Martin]

Partition Magic is far more flexible and works just as well for
this application.

modifying, creating or moving partitions on the same drive. The full
C-drive images I keep as backups are put on separate removable drives. Can
I do this with PM? And if so, what would be its advantages?

Marty

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

XCOPY does copy LFNs if you run it in a window rather than boot DOS. I
don't know about XXCOPY, but is there a problem with XCOPY's handling of
LFNs?

I use XCOPY on my system just to make backups of data folders. I agree
that neither is any good for making a complete copy of a windows system
partition.

You can create a bootable Win9x clone disk using just free (for
personal use) XXCOPY, including the file name issues. But apparently
not for Win2K. Dunno why. Check out http://www.xxcopy.com

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

 

[Keith R. Williams]

XCOPY does copy LFNs if you run it in a window rather than boot DOS. I
don't know about XXCOPY, but is there a problem with XCOPY's handling of
LFNs?

There is a problem not with LFNs per se, rather WinBlows loses track of
the correlation between LFNs and SFNs. Since SFNs are stored in the
registry all heck (TM) can break loose when the right SFN points to the
wrong LFN.

I use XCOPY on my system just to make backups of data folders. I agree
that neither is any good for making a complete copy of a windows system
partition.

As long as you don't care what the LFN->SFN correlation is, your ok.
FOr data files this isn't usually a problem (but can be). For system
files and applications this can be a disaster lurking (it's not
immediately obvious when the mixup happens).

 

[Keith R. Williams]

modifying, creating or moving partitions on the same drive. The full
C-drive images I keep as backups are put on separate removable drives. Can
I do this with PM? And if so, what would be its advantages?

Sure. The biggest advantage (of PQMagic) is being able to change the
size on the fly. Your backup doesn't have to be a full-sized
partition. One can also move partitions around on a disk (sometimes
interesting).

The other big advantage is that I use PQMagic for other things and
don't need PQDI, Ghost, or any of the other stuff. PQDI does it all.

That said, PQMagic is a "lower level" utility than the others, so it's
a little more work to set up the transfer. As always, one had better
know what one is doing when mucking with this stuff. There is much
room for the "Oh $#!&" factor to creep in here.

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

In Keith R. Williams typed:

There is a problem not with LFNs per se, rather WinBlows loses track
of the correlation between LFNs and SFNs. Since SFNs are stored in
the registry all heck (TM) can break loose when the right SFN points
to the wrong LFN.

I see what you mean now. It's just intrinsic to the primitive MS system
of numbering them!

 

[Jan Panteltje]

Global copies are more useful than cloning because then
the second disk doesn't need to be identical. You can use
CD, nfs, or any other media. In linux, just cp -a the various
top level directories you need, and run lilo on the new hard
disk to make it bootable.

This is true.
For me I like global copy to make DVD, for example if I record
a .mpg movie from satellite, I do not author it anymore, but
burn it to dvd as image.
So then I play the DVD with
mplayer /dev/dvd
No fast forward / rewind, but saves so much disk space when
making the DVD, has more space on the DVD (the full 4.7 GB),
and no authoring required, so no syn problems(audio) no programs
needed.
JP

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

In Keith R. Williams typed:

Sure. The biggest advantage (of PQMagic) is being able to change the
size on the fly. Your backup doesn't have to be a full-sized
partition. One can also move partitions around on a disk (sometimes
interesting).

I use it, and I've wondered if it defrags when moving or resizing. I
didn't think of checking when I last did it. What if resizing couldn't
be done without defragging? And if it does, then I would hope that they
do it in a way that's recoverable if there's a power loss or something
in the middle of the operation. (I know it's dangerous if moving a
partition and the new location overlaps the old.)

The other big advantage is that I use PQMagic for other things and
don't need PQDI, Ghost, or any of the other stuff. PQDI does it all.

I think the last statement was supposed to be PQMagic, right?

 

[Jan Panteltje]

Global copies are more useful than cloning because then
the second disk doesn't need to be identical. You can use
CD, nfs, or any other media. In linux, just cp -a the various
top level directories you need, and run lilo on the new hard
disk to make it bootable.

Sorry I mean cat /dev/dvd | mplayer -
of cause (in regards to my other reply, that I cannot follow up on
because it is not listed yet here...

 

[Harry Conover]

Linux: cat /dev/hda > /dev/hdb for example will.
The rest of your post, regarding you do not know this, makes little sense.

Evidently you don't understand the problem, becaause neither Unix nor
Linux is capable of performing a cat operation on a file that has been
opened and is currently being used by another system process, such as
operating system itself. (Try it and you'll only get a remakably terse
error message.) Obviously you need to be able to replicate the system
disk in order to clone the system. If you are familiar with operating
systems, you'll find that none worth their salt will permit any task
to access a file that has been read/write opened by another task,
because of the data skew that could result. Granted, some of the more
costly data base systems incorporate rather sophisticated mechanisms
to permit such concurrent file access, but this is well beyond the
scope and capabilities of OS like Unix and Windows.

I've cloned both Unix and Linux system disks and found that you have
to shut down the OS and use a stand-alone utility program to do this
successfully, just as you had to do with VMS and Windows. (This is
precisely why the Red Cap distribution of Linux contains such a
utility.)

I won't even mention the fact that IIRC you cannot perform a cat to a
raw, unformatted and uninstalled media, another task that cloning
usually performs.

I would add to that that no partitioning software product of which I
am aware is capable of ONLY cloning the disk. Partition Magic and
similar products leave their own thumbprint on the cloned disk, often
difficult to delete without destroying the functionality of the
pseudo-cloned product that they create.
(They do not create a bit-for-bit, track-for-track replica of the
original disk, so for my money, that takes them out of the cloning
game.)

No doubt that others exist, but thus far the only cloning mass
marketed product that I've had any degree of success with is PQ's
"DriveCopy", which is not without its own problems...still the best
non-industrial priced tool that I've found to do this job. By that I
mean that when I attempted to clone a 30-gig, 4-partition disk to a
70-gig drive, the created partitions on the new drive still totalled
only 30-gigs, DriveCopy not expanding the partitions to fill the
70-gig drive as I had expected it to do. Then too, it may have been a
cockpit error on my part, or a limitation in the capabilities of the
3+ year-old version of this software that I've continued to use for my
monthy (well, amost...) master to slave drive backups.

Harry C.

p.s., I'm a conservative and cautious sort, so I alway keep two drives
on my system that periodically mirror one another. I normally operate
from the slave drive and the only time that both drives are
simultaneously enabled by my BIOS is while I'm performing a total
system backup. Backups are extremely fast and instantly available when
using this method. Just a suggestion to others, but I always run a
virus check and the AddAware program before doing my backups, which
assures that my backup drive (actually the master) remains lily white.

 

[Martin]

Sure. The biggest advantage (of PQMagic) is being able to change the
size on the fly. Your backup doesn't have to be a full-sized
partition. One can also move partitions around on a disk (sometimes
interesting).

The other big advantage is that I use PQMagic for other things and
don't need PQDI, Ghost, or any of the other stuff. PQDI does it all.

That said, PQMagic is a "lower level" utility than the others, so it's
a little more work to set up the transfer. As always, one had better
know what one is doing when mucking with this stuff. There is much
room for the "Oh $#!&" factor to creep in here.

I guess I'm still confused. Maybe I need to explain further.

I have an essentially full drive: the C-drive with all the files and the OS.
I know I could put the backup image on the same disk in another partition if
there was room, and then copy it to my removable drive. So what I was
asking was: how would I get the image directly onto the removable drive
with PQMagic and what would be the advantage of doing it that way as opposed
to using Dive Image?

Hope I haven't added to the confusion.

Marty