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Thread ID: 118195	2011-05-24 06:00:00	Symtoms of a failing harddrive?	jwig (15664)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1204512	2011-06-12 06:31:00	this might be helpful, gained from another forum, never tried it but apparently is the way to back up Linux Hard Disk Clone Suppose you have a 40GB hard disk and a removable hard disk whose capacity is 60GB, and you want to backup all the files from the hard disk to the removable disk. With "dd", it is a very easy task. Again, suppose your hard disk's Unix device name is /dev/sda and the removable disk is /dev/sdb. The following command can copy all the content from /dev/sda to /dev/sdb: dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb Here, if=... sets the source and of=... sets the destination. "dd" doesn't care of the contents of the hard disk. It just reads bytes from /dev/sda and writes them into /dev/sdb. It doesn't know what are files. So, the hard disk file system and how many partitions it has are not important. For example, if /dev/sda is splitted into three partitions, the /dev/sdb will have the same partitions. i.e. "destination" is completely same with "source". Notice: to execute "dd" you should login as "root" or switch to "root" using "su" command. And you must be careful, a small mistake may cause a serious problem! Making a Hard Disk Image File Most of time you don't want to make a complete duplication of your hard disk. You may prefer to creating an image file of the hard disk and save it in other storage devices. The following command will create an image file "disk1.img" in your user's directory from /dev/sda: dd if=/dev/sda of=~/disk1.img Since you have created an image file, you can compress it with "gzip" or "bzip2": gzip disk1.img #generates disk1.img.gz or bzip2 disk1.img #generates disk1.img.bz2 You can save much storage space with compression. But it will take very long time. Partition Clone Backing up a hard disk partition is much similar to backing up a whole hard disk. The reason is that Unix/Linux uses device name, such as /dev/sda1, /dev/sda5... to indicate the partitions. For example, if you want to create an image file from the first partition of /dev/sda, use "dd" like this: dd if=/dev/sda1 of=~/disk2.img Also, you can compress the image file: gzip disk2.img By the way, you can copy a partition to another partition completely, just set "of" to the partition's device name. For example: dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdb5 This command will copy all the contents from /dev/sda1 to /dev/sdb5. You must be sure that the capacity of /dev/sdb5 is larger than /dev/sda1. Restoring from an Image File To restore a partition or a hard disk from an image file, just exchange the arguments "if" and "of". For example, restore the whole hard disk from the image file "disk1.img": dd if=disk1.img of=/dev/sda Restore the first partition of /dev/sda from the image file "disk2.img": dd if=disk2.img of=/dev/sda1	gary67 (56)
1204513	2011-06-19 07:40:00	Gary67 Thank you indeed for all this detail: it was very kind of you. I'm a newbie to Linux Mint but finding it pretty capable once I've worked my way around where things are. Back ups concern me so your post will be very helpful. I appreciate the time involved.	jwig (15664)
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