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shageman

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Disk Cloning

I have a machine running unix which the hard drive crashed.  I have the data on another hard drive, but must clone the drive.  Does anyone know of any software to clone unix drives?
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yuzh

Hi shageman,

    Which version of UNIX are you running?

    I believe that you don't need the by a software to clone the HD (most
of the HD clone software on the market is not for UNIX anyway). IF you want to clone a UNIX disk, first you need to find an identical HD (same made, same model, same size). the use the UNIX "dd" command to do it.

   If you cann't find an identical HD, you can copy the contains of the data HD to a new.  eg mount the HDs on the same machine,  or use NFS to mount the data HD on different machine to copy it.


   Cheers!

yuzh
dd works always, independent of made, model, size
Never use NFS (or mount) to make a "identical copy", just dd.
What I mean is that in case you cann't find an indentical HD, you can use the backup command eg: cpio to copy the file systems accross to the new HD, don't use tar if you have to copy some like device files accross, but cpio can do the job for you.
Avatar of shageman

ASKER

Forgive my ignorance here....but is there a unix command similar to DOS scandisk??
In Solaris UNIX, you can use "format" command to do it. In SCO UNIX,
"badtrk" is the one to be used. You have not give us the info about you
OS.

But if you only want to check your file system, "fsck" command will do
it for you.
I am sorry, it is SCO unix....not sure which version
With SCO UNIX, you can boot up the system from FDs, and use "badtrk"
to ckeck your HD.
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NGrigoriev

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Hi NGrigoriev,

   tar can not copy spcicial files like device files. The SCO version of cpio can copy any file on the harddisk to other harddisk or tape drive, so you comment is likely not
the answer for this question.
Hi, yuzh

     Tar does copy device files. At least if they was created by mknod. I copied several Linux filesystems using tar. Also, it is