bootable backups / dd and Windows cloning

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: E K <ekg_ab-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org>

| Me think that cloning a hard disk using dd with 
|     dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb

I think that this should work, assuming that the disks are new enough
that geometry issues don't intrude.  I've done it even when the
destination is a larger drive.

Are there any bad tracks on the source drive?  A naive raw copy isn't 
going work in that case.

| will produce the exact image of /dev/hda on /dev/hdb so that the disk on 
| /dev/hdb can effectively replace the disk on /dev/hda with no effect. 
| However, when I tried to clone a Windows XP machine this way, the cloned 
| disk is not bootable saying that there is disk error. I can still read 
| the cloned disk once the machine boots from another disk (Windows or 
| Linux) and a partition manager will report the same partition image as 
| the first one (i.e. number of partitions, partition sizes, types and 
| flags). I find this frustratingly surprising. Can anyone shade light on 
| this?

Who knows what WinXP does to prevent copying?  Perhaps it checks the drive 
serial number.  Anti-copying code may be coy about diagnostics too.

Can you get it to work for Linux (the topic of this list)?
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