To dd or to rsync, that's the question...

[Dan Thurman]

Tony Nelson wrote:
> On 09-12-01 13:01:47, Dan Thurman wrote:
>   
>> Which is the preferred "backup" solution?
>>     
>  ...
>   
>> I am trying to get data off of disk1 which is failing (via smartd) 
>> and wish to use the correct backup and restore method getting the 
>> data off of disk1 onto disk2 without "integrity loss", whatever that 
>> means.
>>     
>
> You don't seem to be doing a backup, but rather making a copy of an 
> existing drive.  You should probably do that and then also make a 
> backup some other way.
>
> To copy a disk, I always use dd and then expand the last partition as 
> needed (it's usually LVM2, so I then expand some of the LVs).  The disk 
> I usually do this to has WinXP (and Win98) as well as Linux /boot and 
> LVM2 partitions.
>
>
>   
>> In the case of dd, it falls flat, if there are sector errors and this
>> would not work, as in my case - so backup programs that do byte copy 
>> would perhaps also fail. 
>>     
>  ...
>
> ddrescue
>   
I tried ddrescue and it seems to "work", except that there was
4 errors reported.  When I went to look at the mount, it seems
to indicate that the partition was not readable, perhaps left in
some unknown state.  Are there any ddrescue options that I
need to be aware of?  The command I used was:

ddrescue /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2

I tried to go into a working OS (XP) and tried to use the
chkdsk /F E: and it says that it could not locate the master
tables and kills chkdsk.  It also says it is not a NTFS partition
either.

This of course was on a Vista partition.

Thanks-
Dan