bootable hard drive cloner

JLAIP

JLAIP

I'm looking for a hard drive cloner that produces a bootable clone of a BSD system.

I have both software hard drive cloners and a hardware device that'll clone any running Windows system hard drive over to a new/blank hard drive (i.e., old style SATA drives). Once the cloning process completes, I can remove the original drive from hardware cloner (or PC case if using a software cloner), remove/replace the original system drive with the new cloned drive, power-up system and it boots into Windows right where it left off.

But, for some reason, these same cloners can't produce a bootable FreeBSD system drive clone. The data from the source drive is there on the clone, but the clone's never bootable. Upon startup, the system always reports missing OS. So, obviously, there's something in (the boot sector?) of a FreeBSD system drive that is not getting copied from the source to the destination drive during the cloning, as is the case with Windows system drives.

Anyone know of a software or hardware cloner that'll produce a bootable clone of a running FreeBSD system hard drive?
 
Thanks, but I need to be able to run the cloner unattended and when the system's not running.

And I should probably clarify my needs/reasoning: I'm a senior and I don't trust my command-line accuracy. I've twice fouled-up backups with dd - once somehow got the drives mixed-up and deleted the source; and once mistyped a command and spent hours trying to figure out why some of the data didn't end up on the clone. Also, there've been cases where files were locked and/or in use and ended up missing or corrupt.

An offline cloning process is fool-proof for old(er) nits like me.
 
fjdlr said:
Cron root and man dd
Search good command on Web (samples)
Click to expand...
I think I've got pretty good command-line for dd (dd if=/dev/source_disk of=/dev/target_disk bs=1M conv=sync), but, as I mentioned above, I'm looking for a more fool-proof option that easier for me to handle and that can be run via hardware or offline and/or without a command-line (i.e., via a Windows gui).

"A man's got to know his limitations." —Harry Calahan
 
balanga said:
Are you using identical devices?
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No, generally, the destination drive is same type, but larger.

I'm looking for something like this Inateck HDD Cloner, but that is able to actually produce a bootable FreeBSD drive (the Inateck doesn't)..
 

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JLAIP said:
Thanks, but I need to be able to run the cloner unattended and when the system's not running.

And I should probably clarify my needs/reasoning: I'm a senior and I don't trust my command-line accuracy. I've twice fouled-up backups with dd - once somehow got the drives mixed-up and deleted the source; and once mistyped a command and spent hours trying to figure out why some of the data didn't end up on the clone. Also, there've been cases where files were locked and/or in use and ended up missing or corrupt.

An offline cloning process is fool-proof for old(er) nits like me.
Click to expand...
What errors do you get when using dd?

Is this a FreeBSD version? I'm guessing that there are differences between different dd's.
 
JLAIP said:
I think I've got pretty good command-line for dd (dd if=/dev/source_disk of=/dev/target_disk bs=1M conv=sync), but, as I mentioned above, I'm looking for a more fool-proof option that easier for me to handle and that can be run via hardware or offline and/or without a command-line (i.e., via a Windows gui).

"A man's got to know his limitations." —Harry Calahan
Click to expand...
UFS or ZFS ? into hard drive ?
 
Alain De Vos said:
There are external SSD storage which do automatic copy pressing a button.
Foolproof & Windows GUI in one line. Lol. dd is foolproof.
Click to expand...
Advantage of dd is that modern storage became so fast that nothing takes much time anymore. I write 5 GB USB 3.0 images in less than 2 minutes.
But CLI dd still has the risk of a disk error or power loss. You have to start over again if that happens. I don't know if it already exists but it could use some kind of shell that acts on such problems and still continues the process later if possible.
 
dd/cp/cstream will work.

If the target device is bigger you can then use gpart. But it will boot just fine even before that.
 
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