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Copying/Duplicating Discs/Disks - Linux Reference

Here are some solutions to problems Linux users often encounter. If you have a better solution or
have a question please send your solutions, questions, or comments to us.
Are any of these solutions obsolete? Are they clear and easy to understand?



Linux Geeks: copy a floppy with dd and gzip

From floppy to file on filesystem:
dd if=/dev/fd0 | gzip --to-stdout -9 > image.file.gz

dd reads from floppy drive fd0 and writes to standard output.
gzip compresses stdin to stdout. -9 tells gzip to compress better.
And the compressed image file is created.

From file on filesystem to floppy:
cat image.file.gz | gzip -d --to-stdout | dd of=/dev/fd0

cat reads the compressed image file and pipes it to gzip.
-d tells gzip to decompress. gzip's stdout is piped to dd.
dd writes to floppy fd0

If you have two floppy drives, and most people don't, you can just run:
dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/dev/fd1

You can have more fun if you know how to use netcat. netcat lets you send data over your network. You get the drill.

I haven't tried to copy/clone a hard drive this way yet.

Anyone want to try this on a working hard drive? Let me know how it works out.

How about this:
Do the above with a USB hard drive plugged in to your computer. Then take the USB drive to an identical computer and decompress the image there.
The Linux kernel recognises the USB drive as /dev/sda. So on a single partition USB drive, you would use /dev/sda1.


5/3/2007 09:43 EDT -- fusionplant.com