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Date:      Thu, 30 Dec 1999 21:52:00 -0500 (EST)
From:      "Crist J. Clark" <cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
To:        hacker@bolingbroke.com (Ken Bolingbroke)
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: reading/writing raw disk partitions
Message-ID:  <199912310252.VAA91667@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9912301622380.70182-100000@fremont.bolingbroke.com> from Ken Bolingbroke at "Dec 30, 1999 04:54:05 pm"

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Ken Bolingbroke wrote,
> 
> Does there exist any utility that runs under FreeBSD and can read and
> write directly to disk partitions, regardless of the format?  For example,
> if I had a NTFS partition and another Linux ext2fs partition, is it
> possible to use a FreeBSD utility to dump both of those partitions to a
> file, then if needed later, restore them back to the original partition?
> I don't expect to be able to read the individual files on those
> partitions, of course, but I would like to be able to dump and restore
> the entire partition from FreeBSD if at all possible.

man dd

Example:

Copy a slice, da0s2, to a file, slice2.raw,

% dd if=/dev/rda0s2 of=slice2.raw

Now copy a file to a raw partition,

% dd if=rawdisk.dat of=/dev/rwd0s3

However, if the slice 3 is not _exactly_ like the slice rawdisk.dat
was copied from... YMMV. However, if this is for backup purposes,
where the geometry of the slice is static, I would expect this to
work.

(I have never personally done such a thing. When I want to back up a
DOS slice on a machine I don't want to boot out of FreeBSD, I use
Samba to share the DOS filesystem and use a Windoze machine to do a
backup, or just make a tarball.)
-- 
Crist J. Clark                           cjclark@home.com


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