[gentoo-amd64] Re: Cloning a system drive

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

"Peter Davoust" <worldgnat@gmail.com> posted
7c08b4dd0710062149p7c7548aai7ba062ea4e17d2a3@mail.gmail.com, excerpted
below, on  Sun, 07 Oct 2007 00:49:11 -0400:

> This may be a little noobish, and it may have been said, but can't you
> just install the new drive, partition it identically to the original
> drive and then...
> 
> dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdb1
> dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/dev/hdb2
> 
> so on and so forth until you've got everything copied? Or event just
> 
> dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb
> 
> Wouldn't that work?

It should, you're right.

However, that's a direct image straight across, fragmented files, even 
filesystem corruption if it exists on the source, and it's nice to take 
the opportunity to copy file-by file so everything gets defragmented and 
all the file nodes get organized, if possible, particularly since few 
Linux filesystems /have/ a defrag.  Few need it very badly as long as a 
decent amount of free-space is kept on each filesystem (50% is great, 25% 
minimum for best operation, 10% and performance /does/ start to suffer), 
but it's still nice to organize it, getting files all in one piece and 
directories all located together, while one can.

Also, new drives are generally larger and it's nice to be able to take 
the opportunity to reorganize the partitions.

All those are reasons I like my simple partition/mkfs/copy-the-files-over 
method, but some folks don't seem to like that idea for whatever reason.  
<shrug>

-- 
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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