I had a dream about dd last night [was: Recovery Partitions]

[Gary Jarrel]

I'm getting there slowly with this recovery partition business, but
need some advise on the workings of dd.

If I use dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=512 then I'm able to bring the
data across from one hard drive to another and get the system to boot.
The problem is the master boot record is overwritten hence the
partitions which are on hda are transfered over onto hdb if you are
trying to use a larger hard drive as hdb you have a whole heap of
unused space.

So after some research I did the following to create my images:

dd if=/dev/hda of=bootloader.iso bs=446 count=1
dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr.iso bs=512 count=1
dd if=/dev/hda1 of=partitionimage.iso
dd if=/dev/hda of=driveimage.iso bs=512 skip=1

Installed a new hard drive into the system, used a disk manager to
create an ntfs partition on it and tried various ways to transfer the
data accros. Calling the second drive hdb I tried the following:

dd if=partitionimage.iso of=/dev/hdb1 bs=512

This did not work reporting that there is no bootable device in the system.

dd if=driveimage.iso of=/dev/hdb bs=512 skip=1

The problem as the previous command.

dd if=bootloader.iso of=/dev/hdb bs=446 count=1
dd if=driveimage.iso of=/dev/hdb bs=512 skip=1

hoping that this would rewrite the bootloader, leave the existing
partition table intact, and then write the drive image, but the
problem was still the same.

dd if=bootloader.iso of=/dev/hdb bs=446 count=1
dd if=partitionimage.iso of=/dev/hdb1

same problem as above

Lastly I tried
dd if=mbr.iso of=/dev/hdb bs=512 count=1
dd if=driveimage.iso of=/dev/hdb bs=512 skip=1

And this time it overwrote the partition table (i.e. the NTFS one that
I created on the second drive) with the details of that on hda and the
new error was "Error loading operating system"

And I believe the following two commands did the same (missing page of notes)
dd if=mbr.iso of=/dev/hdb bs=512 count=1
dd if=partitionimage.iso of=/dev/hdb1

So if there are any experts on dd or structures of hard drives who can
give me some pointers that would be much appreciated.

Thank you for all your help

- garyj

On 11/17/06, Gary Jarrel <garyjarrel at gmail.com> wrote:
> Working on a few concepts at the moment, will advise as soon as
> something feasible eventuates!
>
> Gary
>
> On 11/16/06, Brian Fahrlander <brian at fahrlander.net> wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > rpowersau at gmail.com wrote:
> > > On 11/16/06, Gary Jarrel <garyjarrel at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> I figured that something like dd might to the trick, I was thinking of
> > >> creating an ISO image of the primary partition, placing that onto the
> > >> hidden partition. Then I need an option to make the hidden partition
> > >> bootable, to avoid using any floppies. It could boot into a linux
> > >> based distribution such as ubuntu I guess, and present the user with a
> > >> menu allowing them to override the contents on the first partition
> >
> >     Before we get too far afield...
> >
> >     This is something that I've seen, and wanted to do. Personally, I
> > get a great deal of joy from re-using a 'hidden' partition from a
> > Windows disk, not only for doubling the size of the drives, but to make
> > a 'fallback' partition (but this time for Linux).
> >
> >     If you get any part of this worked out, and email me the details,
> > I'll do the Wiki page for this- that's how much I want to know about it.
> > And I keep a spare system around for such research. I just can deal with
> > it now, 'cause I'm fighting this pam-stuff...
> >
> > - --
> >  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >  Brian Fahrländer                 Christian, Conservative, and Technomad
> >  Evansville, IN                              http://Fahrlander.net/brian
> >  ICQ: 5119262                         AOL/Yahoo/GoogleTalk: WheelDweller
> >  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
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> > =ttkn
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