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Is it possible to use dd to clone only the part of the hard drive which is used?
2019 Community Moderator ElectionUsing DD to copy only half (part) of removable deviceClone whole partition or hard drive to a sparse fileIs `dd` really necessary to clone a disk?why does does windows run checkdisk after I clone into a vm disk it using dd?Cloning hard drive using the dd utilityLinux Mint hard drive clone failed can't boot into KDEDrive name? What is the correct term for the “sda” part of “/dev/sda”?linux - Increase size sdaClone Drive with only Partitioned SpaceEncrypting hard drive containing the MBR with VeracryptHow to mount sda hard drive
if only 1/3 of a 300GB hard disk is used. Is it possible to use dd to clone the drive (but only the 100GB that is used)?
dd if=/dev/sda of=clone.img
linux dd file-copy
asked Sep 10 '14 at 0:29
yoshiserryyoshiserry
17326
|
show 3 more comments
if only 1/3 of a 300GB hard disk is used. Is it possible to use dd to clone the drive (but only the 100GB that is used)?
dd if=/dev/sda of=clone.img
linux dd file-copy
asked Sep 10 '14 at 0:29
yoshiserryyoshiserry
17326
What do you mean by used, exactly? Are you saying you have a 100GB partition on the drive, or a 300GB partition with 100GB of data on it?
– ChemicalRascal
Sep 10 '14 at 0:57
ChemicalRascal - I mean a 300GB particition (C Drive on Windows) with 100 gig of data on it.
– yoshiserry
Sep 10 '14 at 1:01
Why exactly do you need to usedd?
– Volker Siegel
Sep 10 '14 at 1:26
I see an interesting solution from here. serverfault.com/a/439149
– Ramesh
Sep 10 '14 at 1:29
@Ramesh That's brilliant indeed!
– Volker Siegel
Sep 10 '14 at 1:40
|
show 3 more comments
if only 1/3 of a 300GB hard disk is used. Is it possible to use dd to clone the drive (but only the 100GB that is used)?
dd if=/dev/sda of=clone.img
linux dd file-copy
asked Sep 10 '14 at 0:29
yoshiserryyoshiserry
17326
if only 1/3 of a 300GB hard disk is used. Is it possible to use dd to clone the drive (but only the 100GB that is used)?
dd if=/dev/sda of=clone.img
linux dd file-copy
linux dd file-copy
asked Sep 10 '14 at 0:29
yoshiserryyoshiserry
17326
asked Sep 10 '14 at 0:29
yoshiserryyoshiserry
17326
asked Sep 10 '14 at 0:29
yoshiserryyoshiserry
17326
asked Sep 10 '14 at 0:29
yoshiserryyoshiserry
17326
asked Sep 10 '14 at 0:29
yoshiserryyoshiserry
17326
17326
What do you mean by used, exactly? Are you saying you have a 100GB partition on the drive, or a 300GB partition with 100GB of data on it?
– ChemicalRascal
Sep 10 '14 at 0:57
ChemicalRascal - I mean a 300GB particition (C Drive on Windows) with 100 gig of data on it.
– yoshiserry
Sep 10 '14 at 1:01
Why exactly do you need to usedd?
– Volker Siegel
Sep 10 '14 at 1:26
I see an interesting solution from here. serverfault.com/a/439149
– Ramesh
Sep 10 '14 at 1:29
@Ramesh That's brilliant indeed!
– Volker Siegel
Sep 10 '14 at 1:40
|
show 3 more comments
What do you mean by used, exactly? Are you saying you have a 100GB partition on the drive, or a 300GB partition with 100GB of data on it?
– ChemicalRascal
Sep 10 '14 at 0:57
ChemicalRascal - I mean a 300GB particition (C Drive on Windows) with 100 gig of data on it.
– yoshiserry
Sep 10 '14 at 1:01
Why exactly do you need to usedd?
– Volker Siegel
Sep 10 '14 at 1:26
I see an interesting solution from here. serverfault.com/a/439149
– Ramesh
Sep 10 '14 at 1:29
@Ramesh That's brilliant indeed!
– Volker Siegel
Sep 10 '14 at 1:40
What do you mean by used, exactly? Are you saying you have a 100GB partition on the drive, or a 300GB partition with 100GB of data on it?
– ChemicalRascal
Sep 10 '14 at 0:57
What do you mean by used, exactly? Are you saying you have a 100GB partition on the drive, or a 300GB partition with 100GB of data on it?
– ChemicalRascal
Sep 10 '14 at 0:57
ChemicalRascal - I mean a 300GB particition (C Drive on Windows) with 100 gig of data on it.
– yoshiserry
Sep 10 '14 at 1:01
ChemicalRascal - I mean a 300GB particition (C Drive on Windows) with 100 gig of data on it.
– yoshiserry
Sep 10 '14 at 1:01
Why exactly do you need to use
dd?– Volker Siegel
Sep 10 '14 at 1:26
Why exactly do you need to use
dd?– Volker Siegel
Sep 10 '14 at 1:26
I see an interesting solution from here. serverfault.com/a/439149
– Ramesh
Sep 10 '14 at 1:29
I see an interesting solution from here. serverfault.com/a/439149
– Ramesh
Sep 10 '14 at 1:29
@Ramesh That's brilliant indeed!
– Volker Siegel
Sep 10 '14 at 1:40
@Ramesh That's brilliant indeed!
– Volker Siegel
Sep 10 '14 at 1:40
|
show 3 more comments
2 Answers
2
active
oldest
votes
Can not dd parts of filesystem
You can use dd to copy a whole partition, which could be only a part of the harddisk.
You are asking whether you can use dd to copy part of a partition.
In the general case, that can not work:
It would mean you copy only a part of a file system. There is no reason the actual data should be at the start of the available space. And even if it was, there will still be relevant information in other parts in general.
It something like this would work - possibly with a different tool than dd, that tool would need to understand how the data is structured on the partition - that is, it needs to understand the filesystem.
It sounds more useful to let the normal filesystem driver understand how the data is arranged on the disk, and use tar or similar to pack up that data to put it somewhere else.
Resize filesystem, use dd then
One way to do something similar to what you ask for would be to resize the partition.
In a first step, resize the 300GB partition that is only filled to one third to a partition of slightly above 100GB which is almost full.
gparted, a GNOME-focused GUI front-end for the libparted library, is a commonly recommended partitioning manager, but the parted CLI front-end also exists (and is actually the reference implementation for libparted). cfdisk, fdisk and the like are also CLI options, and while I'd say they're less friendly than gparted most Linux distros should have them as part of the core utilities package.
After resizing, you can use dd in the standard way on a complete partition, containing a complete file system.
Filesystem archive tool
Depending on what you want to do, this may also be helpful:
fsarchiver is a tool that creates custom images from filesystems in a compressed format, that need to be unpacked with the same tool.
I would not recommend the tool in general to create images because of the custom format, but as an intermediate state it may make sense. You would create an image of the existing partition, that will not need space for the empty part of the file system. Then, you can use it to unpack it to a different partition and a different file system. The filesystem is generated by fsarchiver as part of the unpacking.
edited Sep 10 '14 at 10:49
ChemicalRascal
1831113
answered Sep 10 '14 at 1:16
Volker SiegelVolker Siegel
11.1k33261
add a comment |
partclone (from the same authors as CloneZilla) can do that. It does not seem to use a DD compatible image format though.
partimage can also do that, with less supported filesystems.
You should be able to convert the images to DD compatible format by restoring the images to a file. (You might want to convert it to sparse file as well)
You won't be able to restore the image to a smaller disk, since it is still a block image, but it uses knowledge of the filesystem to skipped the unused parts.
Exact commands needs more info, like the source filesystem, since partimage comes in filesystem-specific versions.
answered 20 hours ago
Gert van den BergGert van den Berg
1,045616
add a comment |
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2 Answers
2
active
oldest
votes
2 Answers
2
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
active
oldest
votes
Can not dd parts of filesystem
You can use dd to copy a whole partition, which could be only a part of the harddisk.
You are asking whether you can use dd to copy part of a partition.
In the general case, that can not work:
It would mean you copy only a part of a file system. There is no reason the actual data should be at the start of the available space. And even if it was, there will still be relevant information in other parts in general.
It something like this would work - possibly with a different tool than dd, that tool would need to understand how the data is structured on the partition - that is, it needs to understand the filesystem.
It sounds more useful to let the normal filesystem driver understand how the data is arranged on the disk, and use tar or similar to pack up that data to put it somewhere else.
Resize filesystem, use dd then
One way to do something similar to what you ask for would be to resize the partition.
In a first step, resize the 300GB partition that is only filled to one third to a partition of slightly above 100GB which is almost full.
gparted, a GNOME-focused GUI front-end for the libparted library, is a commonly recommended partitioning manager, but the parted CLI front-end also exists (and is actually the reference implementation for libparted). cfdisk, fdisk and the like are also CLI options, and while I'd say they're less friendly than gparted most Linux distros should have them as part of the core utilities package.
After resizing, you can use dd in the standard way on a complete partition, containing a complete file system.
Filesystem archive tool
Depending on what you want to do, this may also be helpful:
fsarchiver is a tool that creates custom images from filesystems in a compressed format, that need to be unpacked with the same tool.
I would not recommend the tool in general to create images because of the custom format, but as an intermediate state it may make sense. You would create an image of the existing partition, that will not need space for the empty part of the file system. Then, you can use it to unpack it to a different partition and a different file system. The filesystem is generated by fsarchiver as part of the unpacking.
edited Sep 10 '14 at 10:49
ChemicalRascal
1831113
answered Sep 10 '14 at 1:16
Volker SiegelVolker Siegel
11.1k33261
add a comment |
Can not dd parts of filesystem
You can use dd to copy a whole partition, which could be only a part of the harddisk.
You are asking whether you can use dd to copy part of a partition.
In the general case, that can not work:
It would mean you copy only a part of a file system. There is no reason the actual data should be at the start of the available space. And even if it was, there will still be relevant information in other parts in general.
It something like this would work - possibly with a different tool than dd, that tool would need to understand how the data is structured on the partition - that is, it needs to understand the filesystem.
It sounds more useful to let the normal filesystem driver understand how the data is arranged on the disk, and use tar or similar to pack up that data to put it somewhere else.
Resize filesystem, use dd then
One way to do something similar to what you ask for would be to resize the partition.
In a first step, resize the 300GB partition that is only filled to one third to a partition of slightly above 100GB which is almost full.
gparted, a GNOME-focused GUI front-end for the libparted library, is a commonly recommended partitioning manager, but the parted CLI front-end also exists (and is actually the reference implementation for libparted). cfdisk, fdisk and the like are also CLI options, and while I'd say they're less friendly than gparted most Linux distros should have them as part of the core utilities package.
After resizing, you can use dd in the standard way on a complete partition, containing a complete file system.
Filesystem archive tool
Depending on what you want to do, this may also be helpful:
fsarchiver is a tool that creates custom images from filesystems in a compressed format, that need to be unpacked with the same tool.
I would not recommend the tool in general to create images because of the custom format, but as an intermediate state it may make sense. You would create an image of the existing partition, that will not need space for the empty part of the file system. Then, you can use it to unpack it to a different partition and a different file system. The filesystem is generated by fsarchiver as part of the unpacking.
edited Sep 10 '14 at 10:49
ChemicalRascal
1831113
answered Sep 10 '14 at 1:16
Volker SiegelVolker Siegel
11.1k33261
add a comment |
Can not dd parts of filesystem
You can use dd to copy a whole partition, which could be only a part of the harddisk.
You are asking whether you can use dd to copy part of a partition.
In the general case, that can not work:
It would mean you copy only a part of a file system. There is no reason the actual data should be at the start of the available space. And even if it was, there will still be relevant information in other parts in general.
It something like this would work - possibly with a different tool than dd, that tool would need to understand how the data is structured on the partition - that is, it needs to understand the filesystem.
It sounds more useful to let the normal filesystem driver understand how the data is arranged on the disk, and use tar or similar to pack up that data to put it somewhere else.
Resize filesystem, use dd then
One way to do something similar to what you ask for would be to resize the partition.
In a first step, resize the 300GB partition that is only filled to one third to a partition of slightly above 100GB which is almost full.
gparted, a GNOME-focused GUI front-end for the libparted library, is a commonly recommended partitioning manager, but the parted CLI front-end also exists (and is actually the reference implementation for libparted). cfdisk, fdisk and the like are also CLI options, and while I'd say they're less friendly than gparted most Linux distros should have them as part of the core utilities package.
After resizing, you can use dd in the standard way on a complete partition, containing a complete file system.
Filesystem archive tool
Depending on what you want to do, this may also be helpful:
fsarchiver is a tool that creates custom images from filesystems in a compressed format, that need to be unpacked with the same tool.
I would not recommend the tool in general to create images because of the custom format, but as an intermediate state it may make sense. You would create an image of the existing partition, that will not need space for the empty part of the file system. Then, you can use it to unpack it to a different partition and a different file system. The filesystem is generated by fsarchiver as part of the unpacking.
edited Sep 10 '14 at 10:49
ChemicalRascal
1831113
answered Sep 10 '14 at 1:16
Volker SiegelVolker Siegel
11.1k33261
Can not dd parts of filesystem
You can use dd to copy a whole partition, which could be only a part of the harddisk.
You are asking whether you can use dd to copy part of a partition.
In the general case, that can not work:
It would mean you copy only a part of a file system. There is no reason the actual data should be at the start of the available space. And even if it was, there will still be relevant information in other parts in general.
It something like this would work - possibly with a different tool than dd, that tool would need to understand how the data is structured on the partition - that is, it needs to understand the filesystem.
It sounds more useful to let the normal filesystem driver understand how the data is arranged on the disk, and use tar or similar to pack up that data to put it somewhere else.
Resize filesystem, use dd then
One way to do something similar to what you ask for would be to resize the partition.
In a first step, resize the 300GB partition that is only filled to one third to a partition of slightly above 100GB which is almost full.
gparted, a GNOME-focused GUI front-end for the libparted library, is a commonly recommended partitioning manager, but the parted CLI front-end also exists (and is actually the reference implementation for libparted). cfdisk, fdisk and the like are also CLI options, and while I'd say they're less friendly than gparted most Linux distros should have them as part of the core utilities package.
After resizing, you can use dd in the standard way on a complete partition, containing a complete file system.
Filesystem archive tool
Depending on what you want to do, this may also be helpful:
fsarchiver is a tool that creates custom images from filesystems in a compressed format, that need to be unpacked with the same tool.
I would not recommend the tool in general to create images because of the custom format, but as an intermediate state it may make sense. You would create an image of the existing partition, that will not need space for the empty part of the file system. Then, you can use it to unpack it to a different partition and a different file system. The filesystem is generated by fsarchiver as part of the unpacking.
edited Sep 10 '14 at 10:49
ChemicalRascal
1831113
answered Sep 10 '14 at 1:16
Volker SiegelVolker Siegel
11.1k33261
edited Sep 10 '14 at 10:49
ChemicalRascal
1831113
edited Sep 10 '14 at 10:49
ChemicalRascal
1831113
edited Sep 10 '14 at 10:49
ChemicalRascal
1831113
1831113
answered Sep 10 '14 at 1:16
Volker SiegelVolker Siegel
11.1k33261
answered Sep 10 '14 at 1:16
Volker SiegelVolker Siegel
11.1k33261
answered Sep 10 '14 at 1:16
Volker SiegelVolker Siegel
11.1k33261
11.1k33261
add a comment |
add a comment |
partclone (from the same authors as CloneZilla) can do that. It does not seem to use a DD compatible image format though.
partimage can also do that, with less supported filesystems.
You should be able to convert the images to DD compatible format by restoring the images to a file. (You might want to convert it to sparse file as well)
You won't be able to restore the image to a smaller disk, since it is still a block image, but it uses knowledge of the filesystem to skipped the unused parts.
Exact commands needs more info, like the source filesystem, since partimage comes in filesystem-specific versions.
answered 20 hours ago
Gert van den BergGert van den Berg
1,045616
add a comment |
partclone (from the same authors as CloneZilla) can do that. It does not seem to use a DD compatible image format though.
partimage can also do that, with less supported filesystems.
You should be able to convert the images to DD compatible format by restoring the images to a file. (You might want to convert it to sparse file as well)
You won't be able to restore the image to a smaller disk, since it is still a block image, but it uses knowledge of the filesystem to skipped the unused parts.
Exact commands needs more info, like the source filesystem, since partimage comes in filesystem-specific versions.
answered 20 hours ago
Gert van den BergGert van den Berg
1,045616
add a comment |
partclone (from the same authors as CloneZilla) can do that. It does not seem to use a DD compatible image format though.
partimage can also do that, with less supported filesystems.
You should be able to convert the images to DD compatible format by restoring the images to a file. (You might want to convert it to sparse file as well)
You won't be able to restore the image to a smaller disk, since it is still a block image, but it uses knowledge of the filesystem to skipped the unused parts.
Exact commands needs more info, like the source filesystem, since partimage comes in filesystem-specific versions.
answered 20 hours ago
Gert van den BergGert van den Berg
1,045616
partclone (from the same authors as CloneZilla) can do that. It does not seem to use a DD compatible image format though.
partimage can also do that, with less supported filesystems.
You should be able to convert the images to DD compatible format by restoring the images to a file. (You might want to convert it to sparse file as well)
You won't be able to restore the image to a smaller disk, since it is still a block image, but it uses knowledge of the filesystem to skipped the unused parts.
Exact commands needs more info, like the source filesystem, since partimage comes in filesystem-specific versions.
answered 20 hours ago
Gert van den BergGert van den Berg
1,045616
answered 20 hours ago
Gert van den BergGert van den Berg
1,045616
answered 20 hours ago
Gert van den BergGert van den Berg
1,045616
answered 20 hours ago
Gert van den BergGert van den Berg
1,045616
1,045616
add a comment |
add a comment |
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What do you mean by used, exactly? Are you saying you have a 100GB partition on the drive, or a 300GB partition with 100GB of data on it?
– ChemicalRascal
Sep 10 '14 at 0:57
ChemicalRascal - I mean a 300GB particition (C Drive on Windows) with 100 gig of data on it.
– yoshiserry
Sep 10 '14 at 1:01
Why exactly do you need to use
dd?– Volker Siegel
Sep 10 '14 at 1:26
I see an interesting solution from here. serverfault.com/a/439149
– Ramesh
Sep 10 '14 at 1:29
@Ramesh That's brilliant indeed!
– Volker Siegel
Sep 10 '14 at 1:40