Re: hd cloning

[Tomáš Ebenlendr]

On i386 are several things that may lead to fail...

First you should use same computer (only replace HD), if this does not
work (with unchanged bios setup), then it cannot work on other computer.
(I mention this, because you don't write that you use it on one computer.)

Second, bios must access HD with same parameters in bios, i.e. same mode
(LBA/CHS/LARGE) and same number of sectors/heads/cylinders (!This may be
different than how linux sees this numbers!).

I think that it should work under conditions mentioned above, but I'm not
sure. It will be better if you specify if you install grub in mbr or in some
partition (like hda1), and how it does not work. The text that it writes
on screen is useful to know if some part of grub was loaded, or your problem
is 'generic' (i.e. any boot loader will fail this way...).

Anyway, I'm responding to this, because I don't know where is the right
place for this question. This (development list of grub2) is not.

> is it possible to clone an entire HD to another one (with exactly the
> same space/sectors/heads etc) without reinstalling grub ?
>
> I'm doing:
>
>         dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb
>
>         dd if=/dev/hda of=hda.mbr bs=512 count=1
>
>         sfdisk -d /dev/hda > hda.sf
>
> to clone the HD, save the MBR and partition table, and then:
>
>         dd if=hda.mbr of=/dev/hdb
>
>         sfdisk /dev/hdb < hda.sf
>
> to restore the MBR and partition table on the target drive.
>
> As this seems not to work (at least on i386), do I need to backup
> something else ? Of course, the original HD start with a perfectly
> working grub.
>
> thanks in advance,
>
>       Giampaolo


-- 
                                            Tomas 'Ebi' Ebenlendr
                                            http://get.to/ebik