From owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Wed Aug 31 20:49:39 2016 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EC9B7BCA86F for ; Wed, 31 Aug 2016 20:49:39 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from shamim.shahriar@gmail.com) Received: from mail-wm0-x22e.google.com (mail-wm0-x22e.google.com [IPv6:2a00:1450:400c:c09::22e]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (Client CN "smtp.gmail.com", Issuer "Google Internet Authority G2" (verified OK)) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 8017A8EE for ; Wed, 31 Aug 2016 20:49:39 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from shamim.shahriar@gmail.com) Received: by mail-wm0-x22e.google.com with SMTP id c133so49115097wmd.1 for ; Wed, 31 Aug 2016 13:49:39 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=subject:to:references:from:message-id:date:user-agent:mime-version :in-reply-to:content-transfer-encoding; bh=DRzJHhGjTLNeQzL2Gb4YFbX0pkRiDJvBjD7PATw+tXs=; b=rvZ7OFUehCjP3Y24iY5QoXC+6M1+fDNQZcz5MPTx5Ih9XZWRPIdgqAEj8nRUTlhCKV JlPnW+UVlG0FXCl+mqIuzFCSfTuq4tsnAIuW8mJbnUeOO+xSIXGn4a14hSk2KCivZlT/ XpIllj7kTVsmcSNJxbawyHqcLsT2p5pMDMe3eqpz52OB1RSXFh5/d8hsgTTnRplEUiox ORJumoN6+HPzLryl0szlWuq59g1M++OGCu1Dkd4z4ElEMZhiW2IW2fcPwjT0W9e6NtBj kq3V3RQEohoaRKi77MgJXZjlVtaAU4R79yUSWu9Ni+czZsZDY2Mlu9PjFogUoH/WsHSi Kl5A== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20130820; h=x-gm-message-state:subject:to:references:from:message-id:date :user-agent:mime-version:in-reply-to:content-transfer-encoding; bh=DRzJHhGjTLNeQzL2Gb4YFbX0pkRiDJvBjD7PATw+tXs=; b=lXE9KkoCpRhy7kH/fiZD7WlBrQuME6KLi3lE+pYOkqV0nUqNYJsvdg+SLpi7m8lYsP 6a664zvdRFvPoVR7tJbPrxsp+rGXfSLKen946yFm+cIjwBXktgMuQcBTZ2RyfaAcac7J FH0/SRqiLPa2ZAIfkpUxoK1A/vfhjHnxFokAmMBhijf/zUK3EB+w4Chh/98k52nPck97 9U1lyHhLgnRyUZgdmUS6Z7HUg3X5I0uCyd5Obm4Lpm2j6woq8AnxzXlonLWgBTv7Tz6z Crc8L2PVMMUHvlchapHeDgrBFd3/eBx3rrlV86JFnKU6cqeOcPmr0GW9/lNkt24Srp0e 8aWw== X-Gm-Message-State: AE9vXwN6tNpzh4secR2MUiZxUhHiX0j8kHKzCqoyuWlqQ6exv+CB3aNhKcvg7SxE08YvNw== X-Received: by 10.194.62.70 with SMTP id w6mr10741768wjr.130.1472676577741; Wed, 31 Aug 2016 13:49:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from osk.homenet ([2001:470:196e:13:f2de:f1ff:fed1:783c]) by smtp.googlemail.com with ESMTPSA id lv9sm1618126wjb.22.2016.08.31.13.49.36 for (version=TLS1_2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128); Wed, 31 Aug 2016 13:49:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: dd blocksize when copying to SSD disk To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <20160831184925.GA80454@neutralgood.org> <2338862.z0bWHT8yXQ@curlew.lan> From: Shamim Shahriar Message-ID: Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 21:49:36 +0100 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <2338862.z0bWHT8yXQ@curlew.lan> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.22 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 20:49:40 -0000 On 31/08/2016 20:40, Mike Clarke wrote: > On Wednesday 31 Aug 2016 14:49:25 Kevin P. Neal wrote: >> On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 06:35:28PM +0200, Christoph P.U. Kukulies wrote: >>> I'm about to copy an existing Windows 7 system to an SSD. Source drive >>> is a hard disk of 256 GB, destination drive a 500 GB Samsung SSD 850 EVO. >>> >>> >>> >>> Given the fact that unnecessary write operations to SSDs should be >>> avoided I'm thinking about the best strategy to use dd to write to the >>> SSD. >> I'm not sure that dd is the best strategy. Using Windows to do the copy >> may be better. > But the Windows copy command isn't very good at copying the entire system, it > will fail to copy open files and certain "special" system files. On the other > hand dd will copy everything in the partition but at the expense of wasting > space by copying all the unused blocks. > > An alternative would be to use Driveimage XML > from within Windows to create a > compressed backup of all used blocks in the system. It's also available on a > Knopixx live CD which, I think, runs > it under wine so it could probably be run under wine on FreeBSD to create or > restore a backup of an entire Windows partition. > As far as I can remember G4L has the provision of copying NTFS partitions data-only. We used to use it to create/transfer image from a sysprepped system to numerous other machines. The good bit was that it did not need a running windows as G4L comes with its own bootable image/iso. Have you considered that yet? Hope this helps.