Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2007 10:29:15 -0700 From: "Steve Franks" <stevefranks@ieee.org> To: "User Questions" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: using dd to duplicate disks/partitions of slightly different sizes - works? Message-ID: <539c60b90712010929m7fef7020v806eb3c1eb24d066@mail.gmail.com>
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I've got two 160GB disks. Different manufacturers, so different # bytes. One is FreeBSD, the other blank. I'd like to backup my system for the fastest possible recovery after a crash - move the plug and power up. I have gmirrored before, but I just wanted to do a quick dd, since I don't want to abuse my cheapo powersupply (has 4 disks already on it). Two questions: (1) If I dd from the smaller to the larger, will it work? What happens to the extra, say 5MB of unused space - will my partition info be messed up? (2) If I dd from the larger to the smaller (df reports only 50% used anyway) is there a way to make sure there is no info in the 5MB at the end that will overflow the smaller, and again, will my partitions be ok? The other option is just to fdisk & label the other disk, then rsync everything to it. Is that the wiser choice? Thanks, Steve
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