[lug] Cloning hard disks?

[Peter Hutnick]

> Boot something like toms root boot, and use dd.

This is a good direct reply to the question, but maybe there is a better
question.

In the past I have used two disks (of about the same capacity) and rsync
(http://rsync.samba.org/) to do a nightly copy (I call it a "cold
mirror").  This saves time, wear and tear on your disk and leaves the
machine operable while the copy proceeds.

It is trivial to make a boot disk that will allow booting to the second
drive.  One day I will write a how-to for this . . .

This has the advantage over SW RAID of allowing recovery of files that are
lost for reasons other than a system failure, such as accidental deletion.
 It can also be /very/ easily extended to work over a network.

-Peter