From owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Thu Sep 1 04:12:43 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 98364BCA895 for ; Thu, 1 Sep 2016 04:12:43 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu) Received: from cosmo.uchicago.edu (cosmo.uchicago.edu [128.135.70.90]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 76EDAFDB for ; Thu, 1 Sep 2016 04:12:43 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu) Received: by cosmo.uchicago.edu (Postfix, from userid 48) id 3436DCB8CCE; Wed, 31 Aug 2016 23:12:42 -0500 (CDT) Received: from 69.209.232.121 (SquirrelMail authenticated user valeri) by cosmo.uchicago.edu with HTTP; Wed, 31 Aug 2016 23:12:42 -0500 (CDT) Message-ID: <53060.69.209.232.121.1472703162.squirrel@cosmo.uchicago.edu> In-Reply-To: <2338862.z0bWHT8yXQ@curlew.lan> References: <20160831184925.GA80454@neutralgood.org> <2338862.z0bWHT8yXQ@curlew.lan> Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2016 23:12:42 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Re: dd blocksize when copying to SSD disk From: "Valeri Galtsev" To: "Mike Clarke" Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, "Christoph P.U. Kukulies" , "Kevin P. Neal" Reply-To: galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu User-Agent: SquirrelMail/1.4.8-5.el5.centos.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Importance: Normal 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: Thu, 01 Sep 2016 04:12:43 -0000 On Wed, August 31, 2016 2:40 pm, 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. Apparently Kevin was suggesting "windows way" of doing this, which is making "image backup", I described that in reply to his post. Valeri > > 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. > > -- > Mike Clarke > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to > "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++