Are there any tools to help create a disk image de novo?
One way to create a disk image is to use an existing disk. For
example, let's say I have a disk /dev/sda and it has four partitions.
I could create an image of the entire drive like so:
$ sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=sda.img
That will image the entire drive, including the MBR, the partition
table, all partitions, and their included data.
Also, I can create a filesystem image de novo, like so:
$ dd if=/dev/zero of=sda1.img bs=1M count=1000
$ sudo mkfs.ext3 sda1.img
That will create a 1 GB file and format it as an ext3 filesystem.
In theory, then I should be able to create the sda.img de novo also by
creating four filesystem images (sda{1..4}.img) and then somehow tying
them together with a made-up MBR and partition table. In pseudo-code,
something like this:
$ cat MBR.img partition-table.img sda1.img sda2.img sda3.img sda4.img > sda.img
And in theory, one should be able to do the reverse: given a disk
image, pull out the MBR, partition table, and all partitions.
Anyone know of an easy way to do this?
Regards,
- Robert
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