>>>>> "Denis" == Denis Heidtmann <[email protected]> writes:
Denis> I am working with an old computer with custom hardware and SW
Denis> than cannot be regenerated. We want to clone the HD so that if
Denis> the existing one fails we have a chance of being able to continue
Denis> using the system. The HD is 1G; the OS is Windows 3.1; the
Denis> computer is a compaq.
Denis> A clone was attempted to a 20G HD, but it will not boot (I forgot
Denis> the error message, but it finally said not a system disk.) And
Denis> at this point I do not know what SW was used to do the cloning.
Denis> My first guess is that the BIOS cannot handle the drive, even
Denis> though the cloning leaves only 1G available. Is this a likely
Denis> explanation? My second guess is that perhaps Compaq did
Denis> something non-standard to prevent drives other than theirs from
Denis> being used. (They would not be the first nor the last company to
Denis> be SOBs.)
Denis> I have searched for ideas, but the answers are so varied that I
Denis> do not know which ones to trust.
Denis> Anybody here have suggestions? What cloning SW is suggested?
ddrescue.
On Debian/Ubuntu, it's called gddrescue these days.
Figure out which drive is which, then do something like:
ddrescue /dev/sdb image-of-my-disk.img
^ ^
| |
from to
Make sure that /dev/sdb is the disk you want to backup. You want it to
be unmounted, or, mounted read-only (you don't want it changing while
you image it, and/or, you don't want an image that looks like it's
mounted as that will force a fsck). Once you have an image on a linux
box as a file, you can try re-writing it over and over to a new hard
disk.
--
Russell Senior, President
[email protected]
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