From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Feb 15 21:10:07 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BE00016A420 for ; Wed, 15 Feb 2006 21:10:07 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu) Received: from clunix.cl.msu.edu (clunix.cl.msu.edu [35.9.2.10]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2C5AC43D55 for ; Wed, 15 Feb 2006 21:10:04 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu) Received: from clunix.cl.msu.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by clunix.cl.msu.edu (8.12.10+Sun/8.12.2) with ESMTP id k1FLA4iU005134; Wed, 15 Feb 2006 16:10:04 -0500 (EST) Received: (from jerrymc@localhost) by clunix.cl.msu.edu (8.12.10+Sun/8.12.2/Submit) id k1FLA4A5005133; Wed, 15 Feb 2006 16:10:04 -0500 (EST) From: Jerry McAllister Message-Id: <200602152110.k1FLA4A5005133@clunix.cl.msu.edu> To: letter2steve@yahoo.com (Steve Quinn) Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 16:10:04 -0500 (EST) In-Reply-To: <20060215194046.6271.qmail@web51413.mail.yahoo.com> X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL7] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: joe@netmusician.org, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: best approach to clone a disk? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 21:10:07 -0000 > > > Thanks Steve, but this is exactly the same script I've been using all > > along, while in Single User Mode. > > > > However, could you explain the zeroing of blocks, and what its > > purpose is for? Does this solve the problem of space being lost when > > cloning a disk to a larger disk? > > Hi Joe > > > Don't worry Joe, you are very very close > > Regarding zeroing empty or unused blocks, have a look at this > > http://www.digitalissues.co.uk/html/os/misc/partimage.html#22 If you use dump/restore, this does not apply at all. Dump/restore goes by file nodes and uses only the existing files starting with the base of the file system directory structure and will not write out anything that is not in the current file tree. Unless you are doing some experiment with sector mapping or some such, you don't really want to do a binary clone of a disk or file system. You want an functionally exact copy of the file system regardless of the size or geometry of the receiving disk. Dump/restore will give you that and the other cloning utilities such as thag G4... or even dd will not do that. ////jerry > > Regarding space lost cloning to a larger disk, zeroing unused blocks wont help that. Imagine your > 10GB FreeBSD hard disk is cloned with G4U to a 20GB hard disk. It will probably work great but > your 20GB disk is only half full. You will have to use growfs to expand a slice or create a new > partition to reclaim the empty space. Sorry, I have not tried this yet and have no experience. > > In cloning to a bigger disk, I prefer the dump/restore script method as I get to fully utilize the > larger disk capacity > > I hope this helps > > Take care > > Steve > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" > >