Bjorn - Andrew's rephrasing points up the fact that my method overwrites whatever is on hdb. The fact that hdb is an exact copy allows you to use hdb as a boot device. Just move the jumpers on both drives to make hda the slave and hdb the master.
Here's the theory. Say hda fails. You move the jumpers, reboot, and you're up and running. Say your machine gets hacked. Same solution, if the hacker didn't mess with hdb. If you want to be sure hdb doesn't get hacked, unplug it after you transfer the image from hda. If your machine catches fire and burns to the ground, well, you're hosed. -Glenn.
-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew MacKenzie [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2002 5:42 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: complete system backup
> Bjorn - One way to do this is to install an additional, identical hard drive
> as a slave in the system. Assuming you are using IDE drives, then use
>
> dd if=hda of=hdb bs=1024
>
> This will make a complete copy of drive a on drive b. Just make sure you
> know which is which -- use fdisk -l to be sure. -Glenn.
Actually, this would make drive "b" an exact copy of drive "a" (subtle
difference).
You could make an image of your hard drive as a file using the same
command:
dd if=/dev/hda of=myhdd.img bs=1024
This image could be stored on a remote machine and could be written back to
a drive by:
dd if=myhdd.img of=/dev/hda bs=1024
--
// Andrew MacKenzie | http://www.edespot.com
// With a PC, I always felt limited by the software available.
// On Unix, I am limited only by my knowledge.
// --Peter J. Schoenster
