| Forum Home | ||||
| Press F1 | ||||
| Thread ID: 27873 | 2002-12-05 00:13:00 | Ghosting using linux (Disk Imaging) | Shroeder (492) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 103380 | 2002-12-05 00:13:00 | If I have a small HDD (with win95) set up as a secondary HDD and a larger HDD (partitioned and FAT32 but otherwise clean) set up as primary HDD. Can I boot computer up using Linux (I have a very small Linux distro on floppy) and use either: #cp or #dd to copy the whole disk image from hdb to hda and then simply boot the computer into win95 on the primary HDD? If so, does anyone know what the correct command line would be? Thanks :D |
Shroeder (492) | ||
| 103381 | 2002-12-05 01:57:00 | In the assumption that there are no bad sectors which have been mapped out in FORMAT or by SCANDISK ... dd if=/dev/hdb of=/dev/hda bs=4k count=xxxxxxwill cause a bit of disk activity. (Use the /dev/blah to fit what is shown while booting; count = number of allocation units to be copied ; bs=block size, not what you might think. The disks don't need to be mounted; in fact I think they mustn't be mounted.) The destination disk might even boot. ;-) However. Since the destination disk is bigger, it will have most of it inaccesssible, because the FAT will be that of the smaller one. :-( You could partition it to be the same size as the source, but that would presumably not be the desired result. To use cp you would need to mount the two disks to mount points (which you can make in the home directoryy of the RAM disk used nby the floppy system). cp -Ar disk1/*.* disk2/ would probably work. (Use man cp for the exact options.) You would need to do a sys c: from a W95 boot floppy afterwards to make it bootable. This method looks more likely to succeed. But I'd be inclined to just do a normal install on the bigger disk the way Bill recommends. :D This strikes me as a "It might be possible, but why bother?" project. |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 103382 | 2002-12-05 04:26:00 | I've had a look at your other thread. It's worth a try doing this. I'm a bit dubious about putting an OS on "different" hardware rather than installing, but the "cp" way should work. My approach would be to do it, then try booting. If it works, then immediately reinstall W95. That would keep all the data, and let you start off with a clean OS. I think. :D | Graham L (2) | ||
| 103383 | 2002-12-05 06:57:00 | There is a GNU Linux tool to do this. I haven't tried it yet but if you are familiar with using Norton's Ghost doesn't look hard. Can make images of various file systems but runs in Linux. http://www.partimage.org/ |
JohnD (509) | ||
| 103384 | 2002-12-07 00:04:00 | Thanks all for the help on this one. I confirm that partimage works wonderfully well although it is not the easiest tool in the ole toolbox! I need to check out the best way to use it when I do try it out on Mum & Dad new computer (as I won have a linux partition to save the image file to - I already using a boot and root disk so I won need linux loaded) Having said that, I suspect it is best (per Graham) not to actually use an OS from a 486 machine onto the new one. The only problem is that M & D dont have any OS CD-Rom to work with... Hmm... Maybe Il try Lycoris?? but would it work on a P166 with 96Mg Ram and a 1.5gig HDD... and would they be able to use it??? ;) :D :^O |
Shroeder (492) | ||
| 103385 | 2002-12-07 00:32:00 | You can use a MS formatted disk as a destination . Make a mount point for it: "mkdir /MSDisk", and mount it: "mount -t auto -o rw /dev/xxxx /MSDisk" . It can even be the one you are going to use for the installation . (The image file will be at the start of the disk, but it will be a "MS file" which can be deleted afterwards, and a defrag would move everything down) . The only other problem I can think of is the maximum file size of a MS file in a FAT32 partition . I have an idea that it's 2GB . . . |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 1 | |||||