Re: Hard Drive Duplication

[Andrew Clausen]

Chris Fischer wrote:
> 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.

Ah, you're right.  Of course, Parted can provide the missing
pieces for Partimage, so we really should get our act
together!

> 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?

"image info" ?

WRT unformatted/unpartitioned, no probs!
The mklabel command makes a new partition table.

> 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?

Parted can delete the partition table, and create a clean
one.  (The mklabel command does this)

Andrew Clausen