Naive Question:

[Doug]

On 05/13/2011 08:09 PM, MirJafar Ali wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have one naive question, but I hope you will not mind.
>
> I work in a Univ Lab ( running ubuntu 11.04) and for the summer I 
> would like to work from home, where internet services
> are either slow or unpredicatable.
>
> SO instead of taking the entire machiine (  which Univ will not 
> allow), how should I copy the entire software on my
> external harddrive which will copy everything ( I mean everything ) so 
> that I can use the machine exactly as my
> original machine in lab. ( All tools, software ( system )). I mean I 
> should not be able to see the difference in any case.
>
>
> This is as vague question, as I am. But please help me, if it possible 
> to do.
>
> Mir
The program will copy the disk exactly. Download and burn to a CD a 
bootable program called HDClone from Miray.de.  There
is a free version, which I think will work OK for your application, and 
there are two pay versions. I have used the "Standard"
pay version.  I copied a whole hard drive from my laptop to a very large 
flash drive using this.  Then I replaced the hard
drive with a bigger one, and burned the flash contents back to the new 
hard drive.  The machine booted right up and
everything was perfect. Both PCLINUXOS and Windows XP booted right up 
from the grub log-in screen.

Make a bit-by-bit copy, or whatever they call it. Verify that the new, 
copied, HD works OK--you might have to futz with
it a little--i.e., do it over, with slight variation in the choices..  
Unfortunately, it takes quite some time--hours. (I was
copying 160 GB.) Supposedly the standard version is faster, and the 
top-notch version, which is more expensive, is even faster.

I know you're supposed to be able to do this directly in Linux from dd, 
but I have had mixed results doing that, to put it
mildly, and remember that the dd acronym is sometimes rendered as "disk 
destroyer."

The only thing I think you might run into is if the two machines--work 
and home--are different, you may have problems
with some drivers.

--doug

-- 
Blessed are the peacekeepers...for they shall be shot at from both sides. --A. M. Greeley