On 05/05/2011 10:41 AM Robert Heller wrote: > At Thu, 05 May 2011 10:10:52 -0400 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote: > >> On 05/05/2011 08:01 AM Brunner, Brian T. wrote: >>> centos-bounces at centos.org wrote: >>>> At Thu, 05 May 2011 07:44:52 -0400 CentOS mailing list >>>> <centos at centos.org> wrote: >>>> >>>>> On 05/05/2011 07:13 AM, Timothy Murphy wrote: >>>>>> Is there a standard way of copying a working system >>>>>> from one machine to another with different partitions? >>>>> You could also utilize cloning software, such as the client version >>>>> of drbl, clonezilla livecd. >>>>> >>>>> You could also do a direct copy with dd onto a connected drive. >>>> Warning: dd is not a good choise if the source and desination >>>> drives/partitions are *different* sizes. >>> Different block mappings will also give you grief. >>> .:. The drives must be identical manufacturer and model, down to the >>> firmware revision. >>> dd is not a backup tool in the general sense. >> ... > > Hmmm.... Using dump & restore (or tar or rsync or cpio, etc.) would > likely be a lot faster. Esp. if the disk is not 100% full. Remember, > dd will copy even the unused free blocks (which is a total waste of > time). And dump & restore will likely use a more optimal block size, > which will copy the data faster as well... Speed is good sometimes. But I was probably either sleeping or watching TV during those eight to ten hours, so the length of time to do the copy didn't matter at all. The most time-consuming part of the job was finding the particular command with the correct args that actually worked-- not the command or utility that "should" work or that "theoretically ought to" work-- but one which in fact *did* work. So if anyone actually finds a faster way to clone a system-- meaning they've run the command(s), and done the testing to determine that it was successful-- I'm all ears. The other possibilities are interesting, but given what my schedule is like, unless success with something else is 99.9% assured, I'll probably do it the same way again next time. Hey, what can I say...? I like success. -- "Truth is the most valuable thing we have, so I try to conserve it." --Mark Twain