[lug] Cloning a Windows XP laptop with Linux

[Chip Atkinson]

I just finished the dd command and there are some things to be careful of.
If it has some special large drive software such as came with maxtor
drives that gets copied over and you have trouble booting from the disk.
Whatever you do, double check your work right after.

On Sat, 14 Oct 2006, Jeff Schroeder wrote:

> BOF asked:
> 
> > Is there a way that I can do this with Linux?
> 
> Use the 'dd' command.
> 
> Assuming you've got the Windows drive and the external drive attached to 
> your system, and you're running Linux, you should be able to simply do 
> a byte-for-byte copy of the Windows drive.
> 
> Pretend the Windows drive is /dev/hdb and the external one is /dev/sda.  
> It's as simple as
> 
> dd if=/dev/hdb of=/dev/sda
> 
> That will copy partition tables and everything else.  Of course the 
> external drive will have to be larger than the Windows drive, and you 
> probably won't be able to use any extra space on it (since the 
> partition table will assume the smaller size).
> 
> You'll probably want to look at some of the options for 'dd', like 
> blocksize, and adjust accordingly.
> 
> HTH,
> Jeff
>