

Available for most distros, partimage is also available for most distros, and doesn't carry any "disk destroyer" risks! If you find dd too complicated, partimage is a good alternative. Just be certain that the destination volume is large enough!Ģ. You can even use this command to clone a disk to larger drive. How long it takes to clone the Linux drive will depend on the size of the disk or partition. This might be a secondary, or external, disk drive attached to your computer. If you only want to clone a partition of your Linux disk drive, use dd if= /dev/sda1 of= /dev/sdb1 bs= 64K conv=noerror,syncĪs you can see, the partition sda1 (partition 1 on device sda) will be cloned to sdb1, a newly created partition 1 on device sdb.

However: while a larger block size makes transfer quicker, a smaller block size makes the transfer more reliable. It's best to include 64K or the larger 128K as a condition. With regard to the 64K settings, the default value is 512 bytes, which is rather small. Let's break this command down for clarity: To clone your computer's hard disk, use the command: dd if= /dev/sdX of= /dev/sdY bs= 64K conv=noerror,sync You'll find dd built into most Linux operating systems – if not, install it from the package manager.
