[plug] "dd" question - dd is bad.

[Mike Holland]

On Thu, 26 Sep 2002, Steege, Phil E wrote:

> I want to "clone" my hard drive to a spare hard drive, of equal size.
>
> The dd command man page says there are different block sizes.  Which block
> size (bs) quantity is right for Linux.

The real block size is determined by the HDD format. Its not like ye olde
writing to tape, which the dd block size might be used for.

  Specifying a block size can only do harm, by slowing the op. Just use
the default.  Or easier, just 'cp /dev/hda /dev/hdb'

  'dd' is an ugly hangover from the early days of Unix, IMHO. Whats that
with the if=/of= ? No other unix command takes filenames like that! It
buggers up tab-completion and wildcards. Join the dd boycot.

> I figured I would just run a nightly cron job with the dd command.

Much safer to put the HDD in another PC and use rsync.
I havnt tried it, but rsync might be a lot faster locally too. Anyone?

-- 
        The origin of Truth is Doubt - Socrates