From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Oct 20 11:43:24 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B233F106566B for ; Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:43:24 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from modulok@gmail.com) Received: from mail-ww0-f50.google.com (mail-ww0-f50.google.com [74.125.82.50]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4A7D58FC0C for ; Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:43:24 +0000 (UTC) Received: by wwb13 with SMTP id 13so2712508wwb.31 for ; Wed, 20 Oct 2010 04:43:23 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:received:received:date:message-id :subject:from:to:content-type; bh=QBmfXGIM5phO1Fjnnmchl2NLM+Gdwqap0uvue24XRhc=; b=GF1X1W8CwY62/OhxSTaTddIB8rYricbsz6R0uADdmbP+NZ68+CItfJD0nB3uQ9Vw3i Dg7F2Re+TIj4KGm0wDrqr92hYCRpje7K2cjDqH5fO6Tan9dHz0DmGeW4f2/cehsDMuLF bgIdL39GdDHBSYTL8hTfBsuQWl0+dPYVDXSDk= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=mime-version:date:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type; b=vADAHvExPwqjKOLe6P/1KnaXs9uEA0xkHuTGpbfIQw1NtxlWkak7g/Mg/PDjFLLtkP ORYmuN8k3DLWqpcC+s1Sa1Jw25fP8Dj/5Ae9yhf4f/DWc5Wm1XXagd1IdG/1MJjEuNGX WHGhbeRFK78bY0UVnr4Rs9PJCrvAEkc8gd2pQ= MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.227.153.11 with SMTP id i11mr4760307wbw.150.1287575003180; Wed, 20 Oct 2010 04:43:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.227.155.11 with HTTP; Wed, 20 Oct 2010 04:43:22 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 05:43:22 -0600 Message-ID: From: Modulok To: FreeBSD Questions Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Subject: dd to clone disks - new disk fails to boot. 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, 20 Oct 2010 11:43:24 -0000 Problem: I copied from an old hard drive to a new one via FreeBSD's dd. The new drive won't boot. The old drive worked fine. (The new drive is known-to-work.) Background: I have a system with a 160GB disk in it. It runs windows. It works. I have a blank 250GB disk. I want to copy the entire 160GB disk onto the 250GB disk, shuffle the SATA cables and boot to it. Basically, I'm just replacing the small hard drive with a larger one. I would then extend the partition using something like gpartd. I booted to a live FreeBSD disk and used dd like so: dd if=/dev/ad4 of=/dev/ad8 bs=1m About an hour later it finished. No errors. I turned the machine off, unplugged the small disk and connected the big disk into the primary SATA header. The BIOS chokes on the new disk. It refuses to boot from it and instead reports 'disk error'. This is bogus because the new big disk is physically known-to-work. In theory it should be an exact copy of all of the data that was on the old, small disk. I thought a dd from one disk to another would be all that was needed. I've done this before, but only with near identical hard drive models and it worked. What gives? Is there some kind of partition (aka 'slice' in FreeBSD terms) table or CHS/LBA black magic going on? Any ideas? Thanks. -Modulok-