dd'ing a Win2K drive - Should this work?

pll at lanminds.com pll at lanminds.com
Tue May 6 15:44:29 EDT 2003


In a message dated: Tue, 06 May 2003 15:20:30 EDT
Jason Stephenson said:


>> Should I be able to:
>> 
>> 	dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sdd
>
>Yes, but that only works 100% if /dev/sdc and /dev/sdd are exactly the 
>same size, i.e. same model drive from the same manufacturer. If /dev/sdd 
>is bigger, it should still work, but you'll have wasted space as the end.

Yeah, both drives are identical in make, model, and size.

I've dd'd drives this way plenty of times, but only for OSes which 
make sense :)

>Don't know if you'd be able to boot from /dev/sdd or not after dd'ing, 
>but in theory you should be able to. It's a bit for bit copy.

That's what I thought!

>Win2K doesn't like to boot unless its on the first BIOS drive. It 
>probably was not installed on the first drive in the BIOS.

No, it was installed onto the 3rd drive in the BIOS I think (whatever 
/dev/sdc would have beem).

>I highly recommend using grub in these situations since it can fake the 
>BIOS out without you actually having to change your BIOS.

Well, that's the way I would do it too, however, the system is not 
mine, and the people involved not the saviest wrt to anything != MS :)

>AFAIK, there's no registry setting to track drives for booting. After 
>all, the registry can't be loaded until after the boot sequence.

Ahh, good point! 

Thanks,
-- 

Seeya,
Paul
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