[clug] Best way to backup an entire harddisk

[Steve Walsh]

Hi Chris

You could look at using dd to duplicate the disks, but you would need the
new disk to be at least the same size as the original one. You can then
connect both disks and reboot the machine with a live CD and either use dd
if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdb1 for each partition, or just use dd if=/dev/hda
of=dev/hdb but be aware if you go from IDE to SATA or SATA to IDE that you
will need to modify some files in the boot loader, etc. The latter option
might also be something you want to do before heading to bed or out to see a
movie, it might take a while..

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Zhang
Sent: Thursday, 9 February 2006 12:13 PM
To: linux at lists.samba.org
Subject: [clug] Best way to backup an entire harddisk


Hi,

I have just finished installing a tomcat server on apache2, I would
like to deploy this system to a different machine in a remote
location. What is the best way to do this?

I have tried G4L (Ghost for Linux), Mindo, etc. Given that the
current machine doesn't have a burner, if not storing the new image
across the network, does that mean I have to create a spare partition
or mount an external harddrive to backup the system?

With the former approach, say I have /dev/hda1 as / , /dev/hda2 as /
home, Do I need also to create a /dev/hda3, and put the creating
image in there? Then burner them, but how do I restore them to a new
machine?

With the latter approach, I could use dd to copy the entire disk bit
by bit, say if the harddisk is 80 GB, do I need another one at least
as big as the first one?

Or is there other way to do this?

Thanks

Chris
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