HD cloning

[Michael D. Bartberger]

Hi Rich:

Just recently, I needed to do this about a dozen times.

If you're using Red Hat, then this becomes pretty easy.  
You can use 'dd'  and specify the device names for the two drives;
e.g.   /dev/sda and /dev/sdb  for two SCSI drives in a machine.

Alternatively (and I was pleasantly surprised to find this),  
GNU 'cp'  recognizes /dev devices as such.  I cloned a few drives
(including partition information, boot sector, etc.)   with

cp /dev/sda /dev/sdb

which made perfect clones.   I'm told this works just fine for
/dev/hda    etc.  IDE variants.   I cloned 36 GB  10K RPM
SCSI drives in about 11 minutes each, using one drive as 
the source and just sticking drive after drive into the 
box, a little further down the SCSI cable.   Worked perfectly.

Check www.deja.com/usenet  for more discussion about cloning
drives under Linux (in fact, this is where I learned about
GNU 'cp'  correctly copying devices like this).

Good luck,
-Mike


----


On Mon, 4 Dec 2000, Rich Grenyer wrote:

> Has anyone had any experience with cloning hard drives for cluster 
> installations? Our cluster needs fully functional disk-based nodes 
> unfortunately, and I don't feel like running through the RedHat 
> installation procedure that many times - any suggestions, or am I 
> just being lazy?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Rich
> 
> -- 
> ______________________________________________
> Rich Grenyer
> 
> Mammalian Evolution and Conservation
> Biology Department
> Imperial College at Silwood Park
> Sunningdale
> Berkshire
> SL5 7PY
> 
> Telephone: +00 44 (0)20 7594 2328
> Fax:            +00 44 (0)20 7594 2339
> email: r.grenyer at ic.ac.uk
> ______________________________________________
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Beowulf mailing list
> Beowulf at beowulf.org
> http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
>