using dd for cloning

[Dan Farrell]

On Sat, 09 Feb 2008 10:38:18 -0500
elmo <elmo at ne.rr.com> wrote:

> I have just about given up with using various cloning programs in
> ubuntu and have just tried using the ' dd'
> command to copy partition to partition

1) don't do this on a busy partition.  I recommend going into runlevel
1, if ubunto supplies such a thing, or else turning off X and ALL your
services.  

2) refer to my http://spore.ath.cx/~dan/doc/xpmove.html  The document
	discusses moving XP, but the same method applies to linux 
	(after writing the document I've used the method sucessfully
	for both, just not cross-bus for windows (won't boot). note
	that the disks must have the same cylinder size.  

> My UBUNTU is on partition sda2 and I'd like to clone it to sdc1 , a
> ext3 formatted partition on an external hard drive.
> 
> I tried  running:    dd if=/dev/sda2  of=/dev/sdc1 bs=512

hm, looks ok to me. but ymmv.  bs defaults to 512, in my recollection.
you'd probably do better to set the default block size of the d

> I couldn't see any action except a constantly blinking mark.  I
> waited for a minute or so and there was no change, just a blinking
> mark. I wasn't sure if this indicated that data was being transferred
> or not.
> 

did you catch what this was showing you?

      $ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/null& pid=$!
      $ kill -USR1 $pid; sleep 1; kill $pid

it sends a USR1 signal to dd to tell dd to output progress.