How can I copy and paste a partition?

[Deleted member 89137]

I have been trying to figure this out for a while. I need to back up a computer for work onto a separate hard drive. I tried a few things but so far none of them worked, tons of errors and stuff. I can't find any simple programs that do just this, isn't there a way to do this through a linux CD or something?

Thanks, Mike

 

[geiger]

Clonezilla?

 

[drescherjm]

isn't there a way to do this through a linux CD or something?

There is certainly that via several methods.

A simple livecd method if your destination disk is at least as big as the source disk is using dd (available on any linux live cd).

The procedure for that is 2 steps.

1. Figure out what disk is your source. Use a combination of

fdisk -l /dev/sd?

or

smartctl --all /dev/sda

...

smartctl --all /dev/sdb

or

hdparm -I /dev/sda

..

remember in linux drives will generally be found at /dev/sda and up

or on older systems/ kernels /dev/hda ...

and determine which disk is what by serial number.

2. Then clone the data using dd

For example if you found that the source disk is /dev/sda and the destination is /dev/sdb

a clone can be done by just the following

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=8M


If you are unsure what you are doing other good options are to get a copy of clonezilla or get a trial version of acronis true image.


BTW, I have used the dd method 4 times this week on 2 different machines ( one windows 7 the other xp) to back them up before repairing. I booted off of the clone to make sure all was well.

 

[BurntToast]

Advanced LAN Pump or TeraCopy .

They operate like an FTP client. Copy 1 file at a time or 100 at a time. You can resume, throttle the speed, etc.

TeraCopy can bind to the windows right click menu to make the process seamless.

These apps work locally or over the network.

 

[drescherjm]

Do either of those copy partitions/drives or are they just network file synchronizers?

And what I mean by partitions can they copy an OS from 1 disk to a brand new disk and make that bootable?

 

[LightningCrash]

Clonezilla?

I second Clonezilla.

 

[sniggle]

I used this the other day to expand the size of my virtualbox windows xp partition:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

And by "expand", I mean I copied the contents of the partition to another drive and set that as the boot drive. Worked perfectly. I used this guide (which should apply to your situation):

http://www.my-guides.net/en/content/view/122/26/

 

[onyou]

You are running Windows 7 64 bit. So, the partitioning utility with the copy partitions feature can help you copy exist partition to another partition directly.
The following article maybe can help you.
http://www.extend-partition.com/resource/copy-partition.html