Copying a Hard Disk Containing Windows With Fedora

[Bill Davidsen]

Oliver Ruebenacker wrote:
>      Dear friends,
> 
>   I need to copy the hard disk of a Windows computer to a new hard
> disk of equal size. I was thinking of connecting both drives
> (SATA/150), booting from the Fedora 8 Rescue Disk and then do
> 
>   dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb
> 
>   in hope that after that, the second hard disk can be used in place
> of the first one (including booting Windows, of course).
> 
>   Does this work? Thanks!
> 
If the drives are not totally identical, I believe that you want to 
create a partition on the destination of the same type and size, make it 
active and then copy the partition (with dd as you proposed). There was 
a reason for doing it that way, but I have no idea what it is/was years 
after learning that the hard way.

If you have an identical drive just do what you wanted, it should work.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot