Question about dd / drive imaging

L

lecraw789

n00b
Joined
Jul 23, 2007
Messages
7
I have a desktop with a 750 GB hard drive. It has WIndows Vista on it,
and only about 50 GB of the drive is in use.

I would like to image the 750 GB drive onto a 500 GB drive, and then
use the 500 GB drive, and leave the 750 GB drive untouched.

I am familiar with dd, but it can't be used in this case since I want to
image from a larger drive onto a smaller drive.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

Thank you.
 
I believe GParted can handle something like this, and is free. Some of the drive manufacturer's offer free basic tools that do such a thing as well. I know Ghost can easily handle drives of different sizes, but that's not free.
 
What brand of hard drives are these? If one or both is a Seagate or Maxtor or a mix of the two, the SeaTools/MaxBlast software from Seagate/Maxtor now includes a stripped down feature limited version of Acronis True Image for free to do just that sort of task you're trying to accomplish.

If the drive(s) aren't made by those companies, then True Image or Ghost would still be my recommendations for doing the imaging and transfer of one drive's contents to the other.
 
bbz_Ghost said:
What brand of hard drives are these? If one or both is a Seagate or Maxtor or a mix of the two, the SeaTools/MaxBlast software from Seagate/Maxtor now includes a stripped down feature limited version of Acronis True Image for free to do just that sort of task you're trying to accomplish.

If the drive(s) aren't made by those companies, then True Image or Ghost would still be my recommendations for doing the imaging and transfer of one drive's contents to the other.
Click to expand...

Western Digital Data Lifeguard software if one of them is a WD, too.
 
Just wondering,

Install linux on the 500GB drive ? make sure you use 1 large single file system.
plug in the 750GB drive.

dd the 750GB into a local file. but simulatnous pipe it into gzip for compression.. (just like you would do when you tar stuff.)


dd if=/dev/sd??? BS=??? | gzip -v9 750GBbackup.gz
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top