Ubuntu Copy Commands!!

[eazye]

Hello All,

I have an 80GB hard drive with containing only 1 partition - windows XP installed on it. When I boot from the Ubuntu live CD everything works OK.

Here is what I am having trouble with:

When I boot in to Linux, I need to type commands in to the DOS PROMPT thing (called Terminal I think) so I can make a byte for byte copy of the windows XP partition and put it on my external drive.

The files on the Hard drive can be accessed ok from Ubuntu.
Now, heres what im struggling with..

These are the commands I have been given to do this:

/dev/sdb
sudo mkdir /mnt/sdb1
Sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1
dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/sdb1/sda.dd

/dev/sda1 is my windows partition and /dev/sdb1 is my portable hard drive

When entering the dd commands, I receive an access denied message which is driving me crazy!!

I was wondering if someone knows how to do this?

Many thanks in advance.

Eddy.

[Rubberman]

Try this instead:

sudo mkdir /mnt/sdb1
sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1
sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/sdb1/sda.dd

You left the 'sudo' directive off of the 'dd' command so you as a non-root user did not have adequate permissions to copy files to the external drive. BTW, from what you show, the external drive is an NTFS volume, correct? Other problem, your example showed a capital 'S' for the 'sudo mount...' command. I presume that was a typo and not what you actually did.

One final observation. You are copying the entire disc including the master boot record, partition table, and all partitions of the system disc. I assume that is what you want to do. This is what is called a bit-image backup, and is good for restoring an entire disc to a new one of the same size and type. I use that technique all the time for several reasons, including cllient systems before I clean them of viruses, my own system when I want a full backup before I do a major upgrade (in order to avoid having an "oops" experience turn into an "oh sh!t" one), etc.

[eazye]

Rubberman, Thanks for your rapid response! You're correct, I need everything from the NTFS windows partition.

Ive just typed in the commands, looks as if its working now?

Should I see some sort of visual confirmation that the job is running?? If not, how long do you think this job will take?? Its an 80GB HDD.

I have a WD ext HDD with built in locking features, i thought that this was causing the problem.

Thanks
Ed

[Rubberman]

How long depends on the wire speed and the disc write speed. In the case of an 80GB image to a USB 2.0 external drive, you should get 600MB to 2GB per minute, so figure on anywhere from 40 minutes to 1 1/2 hours, possibly less, but likely between there somewhere.

[eazye]

Hi RUbberman

This process has taken over 6 hours and still hasn't finished! Its a really old laptop.

Im going to reinstall XP. then try again. My question was, if I create a partition of only 20GB, will the DD command clone only this partition, or the WHOLE DISK.. even the unpartitioned space?

Hopefully, it'l only copy the partition!! PLease let me know!

[Rubberman]

In that case, the USB ports on your laptop might be USB 1.x, which is limited to 11 mbps vs. 480mbps. That is about 1.3 megabytes per second, so 80GB will require about 50-60000 seconds or 1000 minutes == 16+ hours. Just let it run!

[Rubberman]

The command you used will copy the entire 80GB disc, not just one partition.

[eazye]

Hi rubberman,

i was just wondering if it was possible to open these DD files in windows XP for analysis, if so what program would i have to use?

[Rubberman]

This is a complete disc image, not a file system image. You would need to write it to some hardware disc that is big enough to hold it, or obtain a program that can open it as a virtual disc. I don't know what you would do for that in Windows. Time for you to do some google searching I think.