How to clone the main harddisk

[roberto99]

Hi all
I am looking for a method to clone the whole harddisk of a LMCE System. Does anyone know how or with which tool it is possible?
Thanks in advance
Roberto

[indulis]

If the new disk is installed on the same server as the old one, boot with your bootable Linux distro of choice from CD/DVD, then you can use fdisk or cfdisk to partition a new disk with new partitions that are a bit bigger than the original disk, and dd to copy your existing partitions one by one .  If you do not know what these tools are, then you should not be trying to do this using this method. 

You also need to write a new boot record to the new disk.   You can also do this using the dd command.

I've used this method to copy a friend's failing Win XP system disk.

There may be other foolproof (Ok foolresistant) ways to do this as well.  You may want to google for "clone linux" or somesuch.

OK just had a look, try
http://freshmeat.net/projects/g4l/
http://www.partimage.org/Main_Page

Also more info here
http://www.linux.com/feature/152592


Good luck!

[PlatypusPedersen]

Google the terms harddisk ghosting and cloning, and you'll get plenty of how-to's
Many expensive programs are availabe as free trials, e.g. Norton Ghost.

[Dale_K]

Download Hiren 9.6.  It has many disk clone tools.  You can find it on mininova.org or isohunt by searching for hiren.

I use Acronis True Image for Linux partitions.  Other utils such as Ghost will often require you to rebuild the MBR on linux boot drives after the copy.