Re: [Bug-ddrescue] Disk 2 Disk (Part Deux)

[Marian Csontos]

On 10/27/2009 08:32 PM, Al Grant wrote:
> I know it has been partly covered in posts before. But I never felt I had
> enough info to copy disk to disk.
>
> I have a spare disk here I thought I would give it a go with. The disk is a
> :
>
> Hitachi 100Gb 2.5
>
> My disks are as follows:
>
> address@hidden:~$ sudo fdisk -l
>
> Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> Disk identifier: 0xaf010487
>
>     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sda1   *           1       30401   244196001   83  Linux
>    
Is this ext2 or ext3? Does not matter, as it would not work for either.
Your disks use 1KiB blocks, and according to 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext2 max.allowed file size is 16GB :-(

> Disk /dev/sdb: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes
> 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12161 cylinders
> Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
> Disk identifier: 0xeed6ce43
>
>     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sdb1   *           1       12136    97482388+   7  HPFS/NTFS
> address@hidden:~$
>
> The 250Gb is my main linux drive and the 100Gb is the Hitachi. I have not
> yet added another 2.5" drive to image to.
>
> In fact for safetys sake I will image the 100Gb drive in its entirety to my
> main linux drive (sda). This does raise my first question though:
>
> 1) When going disk to disk can you image both the whole drive and all its
> partitions or can you only go disk to disk on a partition by partition
> basis?
>    
IMO it should work just fine, they are just block devices.
> Off to copy the disk now:
>
> address@hidden:~$ sudo ddrescue -vn /dev/sdb /home/al/rhonda.bin rhonda.log
>
>
> About to copy 100030 MBytes from /dev/sdb to /home/al/rhonda.bin
>      Starting positions: infile = 0 B,  outfile = 0 B
>      Copy block size: 128 hard blocks
> Hard block size: 512  bytes
> Max_retries: 0
> Direct: no    Sparse: no    Split: no    Truncate: no
>
> Press Ctrl-C to interrupt
> Initial status (read from logfile)
> rescued:         0 B,  errsize:       0 B,  errors:       0
> Current status
> rescued:     2653 MB,  errsize:       0 B,  current rate:   39845 kB/s
>     ipos:     2653 MB,   errors:       0,    average rate:   37903 kB/s
>     opos:     2653 MB,     time from last successful read:       0 s
> Copying non-tried blocks...
>    
Notice only 2.6GB was copied (or I misunderstand the output.)

BTW, it is recommended to unmount any partitions on the device being 
copied beforehand.

> Look forward to any replies on what I need to do to write rhonda.bin off to
> a new unformatted disk.
>    
If /dev/sdc is your new disk, then try following:

  sudo ddrescue -vn /home/al/rhonda.bin /dev/sdc

It should recreate the same structure on the new disk, so it is useless 
to format the device, but this would leave unused free space, if new 
disk is of different size.

Cheers,

-- Marian

> TIA
>
> -Al
>
>