Re: [gentoo-user] Hard drive change

[Chris Walters <cjw2004d@comcast.net>]

On 11/9/2012 10:14 AM, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
> Am Freitag, 9. November 2012, 01:38:41 schrieb mindrunner:
>> volker, what is your intention to say i am dumb and stupid. actually you
>> do not know me.
> 
> everybody does something dumb and/or stupid once in a while. I average that 
> one to 1/day.
> 
> There are two ways to react if someone points out that something you do is not 
> the best idea since sliced bread.
> 
> -> oops. Yeah, I see it.
> or
> -> sulking.

I'm going to have to agree with Volker on this.  I don't believe he was calling
*you* stupid - just the idea of using dd to transfer files from old drive to
new drive.  The dd utility has it's good uses - that's just not one of those
good uses.

> no, it does not. Apart from fragmentation you also copy all deleted files. All 
> damaged blocks AND the UUID. 
> 
> Oh, and it is slow (I know, fiddling with blocksize etc you can speed it up a 
> lot. Still slow).

Yes, you copy everything with dd, and it is extremely slow.  It is better to
use another utility to just copy the files and directory structure from the old
drive to the new one.

> Create an image with dd to do some file rescuing? forensic stuff? as a template 
> for containers? To burn it on a dvd/cd? Well, those are valid uses for dd. 
> Converting files? Yes, that is what dd was made for.

Agreed.

> Copying a partition to another disk, different disk? Wow.. that is just wrong. 
> Even if both disks were identical it would not be great idea. Just a 'well, it 
> does work and at least I am not punishing the new disk' way to do it.
> 
> Mind you, cp -auv is not the best way either. With ACLs&co it is not such a 
> good choice. And I am surprised that Joerg Schilling hasn't posted how 
> incredible star is for this job yet. Btw, star is a really good tool for the 
> job. It just needs a lot of typing. 
> 
> tar, rsync, cp, star... there are many good or good enough ways to copy files 
> from one harddisk to another
> 
> dd doesn't belong in that category.

Very true.  I'd personally rather use tar or even dar to copy the files.  cp
has it's limitations, though it is faster, as it doesn't use compression
(technically, you don't need that with tar, either).

Regards,
Chris


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