backing up with dd fails

[Dave Mitchell]

On Mon, Nov 20, 2006 at 07:02:51AM -0700, Kevin Kempter wrote:
> I've recently returned to Fedora from SuSE. With SuSE I would always backup my 
> main laptop hard drive to a second drive via dd as follows:
> 1) boot into single user mode (init 1)
> 2) run dd if=/dev/SRC of=/dev/TARGET conv=noerror,sync bs=4k    #where SRC = 
> my current OS drive and TARGET = the backup drive

Try a larger block size, eg 64k or larger

Are you sure you want noerror for a backup - that means 'ignore errors
and continue' - the sort of think you might want when getting data off a
failing disk,  but not when doing a reliable backup.

The sync option should be at best unnecessary, or at worst will corrupt
your data.


> I tried this yesterday with my new FC6 install. It from about 7:30pm until 
> 7:00am and I saw a message on the screen, something like this:
> 
> Firmware error detected, ipw2200, restarting

This is most likely a red herring. Your wireless firmware probably has a
bug.

-- 
Fire extinguisher (n) a device for holding open fire doors.