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AlexFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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Need full clone of SD card.

How do I clone the ENTIRE ESXi SD card, I.E I have taken it out of the server, I want to clone it, all of it, block by block, but none of the software I found will do this.

Any ideas?
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Mlanda T
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Have you looked at the HDD Raw Copy Tool by HDD Guru?

http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool/

The tool supports low-level, sector by sector copying of various media formats.
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ASKER

Excellent choice, copying now, if it's successful you win the points! :D
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Dr. Klahn

Well, first you need an SD card that is "identical" to the one you want to clone.  This is probably the most difficult part, as SD cards may have standardized capacities, but the capacities are not standard.  An 8 GB card might have a capacity anywhere from 7 GB to 8.5 GB depending on how the manufacturer calls out gigabytes.  You will need one that is ideally equal to the source SD card; this may not be possible to find.  The next best possibility is a card that is slightly larger than the one you want to clone.  Again, it will be difficult to determine this by looking at the label on the SD card or at the rated capacity; the only way to discover the true capacity is to stick it into an SD reader and find out how many blocks are on the card.

Once you have the target SD card, then a tool such as ImageUSB or USB Image Tool will do the job.

https://www.alexpage.de/usb-image-tool/

https://www.osforensics.com/tools/write-usb-images.html
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ASKER

it's exactly the same card so we should be good to go.
Here we go again..... how do you know if it's the same card ?

you are going to clone it and write it back to the same card ?

The only software which will do it, is dd - linux/unix.

This is not a supported activity , the VMware recommended solution is to backup and restore the ESXi configuration using PowerCLI or vSphere vCLI.
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ASKER

Urgh, really, so I can't just do a direct clone of the internal SD Card/
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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