OT: Cloning windows XP with dd

[Vaughn Treude]

On Fri, 2005-10-07 at 20:09, Kurt Granroth wrote:
> On Oct 7, 2005, at 6:10 PM, Vaughn Treude wrote:
> >     A while back I posted a question about cloning a Windows XP  
> > drive using
> > a Linux live CD such as Knoppix.  The suggestion to use "dd" was a  
> > good
> > one.  I googled this command and found detailed instructions on
> > www.nilbus.com for doing this.  In short, they said to:
> >     Use fdisk to create partitions on the new drive identical to  
> > those on
> > the old drive (using the -u option to display sectors rather than
> > cylinders, which ensure that they'll be the same.)
> >     Use dd to copy the 440 bytes of the boot partition.
> >     Use dd to copy the contents of the other partitions.
> [snip]
> 
> Heh, what a coincidence.  I cloned a WinXP partition using dd on  
> Wednesday for the first.  It worked like a charm.
> 
> The one thing I did different was in copying the MBR.  Instead of  
> copying parts of the boot partition (is there such a thing with  
> Windows?), I copied the entire 512 bytes of the MBR.
> 
> My procedure, then was:
> 
> 1. fdisk -u /dev/hda
> 2. fdisk -u /dev/hdd
> 3. fdisk /dev/hdd (make partition with the EXACT same size)
> 4. dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdd1
> 5. dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdd bs=512 count=1
> 
Hmmm, that's interesting.  The instructions said to copy only 440 bytes
because the partition table lived in the rest.  Since you did that last,
I'm surprised it didn't mess something up.  Though the partitions were
the same, I don't know if the actual contents of the table could differ
at all due to disk geometry.  If not, no problem.  I will try copying
the MBR again, at least those first 440 bytes.
More likely though, it's something to do with that darned hidden
partition.  It appears the system you cloned didn't have one.  I have
been researching this issue and have found some venomous comments about
Compaq/HP's weird setup.  The hidden partition contains not only
recovery info but it has files necessary for the boot.  I know that's a
common thing in the Linux world, but at least for us, everything's
documented.  I haven't yet found much useful info on this "feature".
Thanks anyway,
Vaughn


> A bunch of reboots later (this is Windows after all), and it popped  
> up in my brand new drive.
> 
> Kurt
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