RE: Hard Drive Duplication

[Chris Fischer]

Hi Andrew,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: address@hidden
[mailto:address@hidden

> Hard drive duplication is usually referred to as "disk
imaging".
>
> Parted can do it.  There is also a program called
Partition Image:
> partimage.sourceforge.net
>
> (We intend to merge the 2 programs, but we still haven't
gotten around
> to it!)

Sounds like an excellent idea!

> It is probably easier to use. but it can't resize
partitions (which
> you probably don't need, anyway)
>
> I guess I should recommend partimage.  You can also use
> parted to do it,
> but it's a bit more complicated.  There's a section on it
in
> the Parted docs.

Thanks for the pointer. Well, the info on the partimage
website is confusing as it states that one can use partimage
to "install many identical PCs". But in their FAQ it states
that "The current version can only read/write from/to a
partition" and essentially that it cannot write to
unpartitioned disk space, which is exactly what I need it to
do. What I conclude from this is that you could certainly
image many disks, so long as they are partitioned ahead of
time.

If it weren't for the 2GB limit of the 2.2.x kernels, I
could just use:

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb!  :-)

Also, I did read Section 8 of the parted manual regarding
disk imaging. After closer inspection I can see how I might
adapt it to what I need. My question then is: Can parted
copy image info. to an unpartitioned and unformatted disk?
Or can parted image over a partitioned disk...for example if
I had 16 drives with Windows installed and I wanted to image
a Linux installation on those drives, could I do that with
parted without having to remove Windows first?

Regards,

Chris Fischer