rsync or dd to clone a hard drive?

[Daniel B. Thurman]

 On 10/06/2010 10:06 AM, Michael D. Setzer II wrote:
> On 6 Oct 2010 at 10:58, Maxime Alarie wrote:
>
> Subject:	rsync or dd to clone a hard drive?
> Date sent:	Wed, 6 Oct 2010 10:58:50 -0400
> From:	"Maxime Alarie" <malarie at processia.com>
> To:	<users at lists.fedoraproject.org>
> Send reply to:	Community support for Fedora users <users at lists.fedoraproject.org>
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>
>>
>>     I have never used dd to clone a hard disk.
>>     
>>     I use rsync for a lot of my backups , and I was wondering what would be the best tool to 
>>     clone a disk. I don’t want 3rd party software also. I want built in command line tools.
>>     
>>     I know rsync will resync where it left off if I encounter a problem, what about dd? Do I 
>>     absolutely have to creat an image before cloning? Ex: dd if=/dev/sda of=sda.img or I 
>>     can use dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb?
>>     
>
> I'm the maintainer of the g4l project that is a disk imaging program. It is 
> usually used to boot a machine from the cd with a ramdisk, and then can 
> make local or network images using dd and compress. Note: this is a full disk 
> or full partition images. Not a file or directory level image.
>
> It also has an option to clone, which is a similar process to you dd option 
> going from one disk to another. 
>
> ftp://amd64gcc.dyndns.org/g4l-v0.35alpha19.iso
> ftp://amd64gcc.dyndns.org/g4l-v0.35a19.devel.tar.gz
>
> or released version on sourceforge.
>
>
>
>>     Thanks.
>>     
>>
>
>
> +----------------------------------------------------------+
>   Michael D. Setzer II -  Computer Science Instructor      
>   Guam Community College  Computer Center                  
>   mailto:mikes at kuentos.guam.net                            
>   mailto:msetzerii at gmail.com
>   http://www.guam.net/home/mikes
>   Guam - Where America's Day Begins                        
>   G4L Disk Imaging Project maintainer 
>   http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l/
> +----------------------------------------------------------+
>
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Just wondering...

1) How does 4GL compare with Clonezilla?

2) Why aren't "backup/restore/image/clone" programs such as (1) above
    integrated into LiveCDs that have most the Linux core, GUI, Network,
...,
    support?


For the moment, I use rsync for linux copy/clones/moves from
source to target partitions for the same hardware, and it works.

     I do these steps:

     (1) Boot with LiveCD

     (2) # rsync -ahHAX <source> <target>

         Notes:
         (a) Optionally add 'z' argument if you want compression and
             add 'v' if you want to see verbosity at the expense of transfer
             speed.
         (b) Abruptly stopped?  No problem, run the above command again.
         (c) <source> and/or <target> can be remote devices but they have
             to be mounted. The <source> ought not be an active running
             OS, can be mounted to /mnt via LiveCD. The hardware for the
             <source> & <target> ought to be exactly the same if one expects
             the <target> OS to be bootable after transfer has
completed.  I have
             done this with (a) remote backup source to target and (b)
between
             two identical laptops transfers via LiveCD on both, and it
works.
         (d) I have not tried to create an rsync "image".  If it were
possible
             to create an rsync "image" with with FULL
acls/permissions/..., how
             would it be possible to perform an rsync "restore"?
             I have not tried this.

     (3) Setting MBR on boot or / (boot integrated) partitions:
         # grub
              find /grub/stage1 (or /grub/grub.cfg)
              root (hX,Y)
              setup (hX,Y)
              quit

     (4) # touch /.autorelabel; reboot     (for SELinux)

FWIW,
Dan