Using a Linux Live CD to clone XP

[saikee]

The dd copies the hard disk data natively in 1s and 0s and probably not an ideal tool to back up a "filing system".

However inside every partition there is a boot sector for storing the boot loader which is NOT part of the filing system. You will have no doubt seen threads that a Windows user complaining not able to get rid of a Linux boot loader after formatting the whole drive.

dd comes in its own because it copies the boot sector across and does not care what the filing system is. That is why Linux can't write on a NTFS partition (gradually changing now) but can clone it. It goes without saying that we can clone Solaris and BSD partition in the same manner.

dd works by counting the bytes, sectors, heads or cylinder. If the source and target partitions or disks are identical then the cloning is perfect because the internal sizes will be exactly matched.

If we back up a filing system in Linux there are many better tools than dd which only copies 1s and 0s religiously without knowing the data can be empty.

Many users say their back up images from a filing-orientated software also boot but that is more to do with the original bootloader and MBR haven't been moved. If we clone a the filing-system XP into a new disk it will not boot. If you do a defrag in XP you will also notice part of the files is unmovable. Therefore a 100% mirror image by dd is the way foraward because it faithfully preserves the original filing structure and the boot loader.

I have used Ghost for cloning XP before I learned to use dd. It has to drop XP system first, hide itself inside the boot sector and so as to re-appear as a Dos program after a reboot. The cloning is also byte by byte too. Ghost has the ability to cope with a target different in size to the source. One needs to pay a license fee to get it. dd is free and much neater if you know how to use it.

dd is fast too. I record a 50Mb/s rate for a 5Gb partition transfer. About 10 days ago I "dd" an extendted partition with 55 logical partitions inside ecah has an operating system and a boot loader. One of the logical partition has a NetBSD. The average 285Gb data transfer rate was 43Mb/s on my IDE with a Asrock mobo with a Amd64 3200 CPU.

To me at least using dd is technically sound and logical to clone a XP system.

XP is copy-protected so that a cloned copy cannot be used on another PC because it will lock up solid when the new hardware is significantly different to the original. This thread can only help a owner to backup a bootable XP system using a simple facility availbale in a free Linux Live CD because XP does not even allow itself to be copied out. The cloned copy is a useful way to have something to fall back on as XP is the most infected system in a PC.