Re: Hard Drive Dupliation

[Andrew Clausen]

Chris Fischer wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> My search for a program that will duplicate a hard drive has led me to
> parted. I've read through the manual and searched the list archives, but
> haven't found a definitive answer to my question, so I'm asking it here.

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!)

It is probably easier to use. but it can't resize partitions (which
you probably don't need, anyway)

> I'm doing some work for a local community college, and I've installed Linux
> with 'ext2' and 'swap' partitions on a hard disk. What I need is a utility
> that will duplicate this hard disk to 16 other hard disks of the same
> geometry. Disk drive capacity is 6.4GB, and at least one of the partitions
> needs to be over 2GB. We've been using Symantec's ghost with inconsistant and
> (frequently) poor results, so I'm hoping I've hit the jackpot with parted.

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.

Andrew Clausen