[ale] Need a big external drive quick. Suggestions?

[Bob Toxen]

You probably should do that dd on a per partition basis, i.e.:

     tcsh
     foreach i (1 2 3 4 5)
     	echo Doing $i
	dd bs=10240k if=/dev/hda$i of=/dev/hdb$i
     end

I find that sometimes just doing:

     dd bs=10240k if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb

doesn't work, probably due to architecture.

Another advantage to doing it by partition is that after each partition
is copied you can mount the new partition on /dev/hdb and test it to
see if it worked.  You don't want to discover Sunday morning that something
didn't work.

Of course be REAL careful that you copy in the right direction.  First
backing up the old drive (if possible) or, at least, its most critical
data is a real good idea.

Bob Toxen
bob at verysecurelinux.com               [Please use for email to me]
http://www.verysecurelinux.com        [Network&Linux/Unix security consulting]
http://www.realworldlinuxsecurity.com [My book:"Real World Linux Security 2/e"]
Quality Linux & UNIX security and SysAdmin & software consulting since 1990.

"Microsoft: Unsafe at any clock speed!"
   -- Bob Toxen 10/03/2002

On Thu, Jun 01, 2006 at 09:25:07PM -0400, Greg Freemyer wrote:
> On 6/1/06, Jim Popovitch <jimpop at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Frankly, I would dump the USB idea and use a network (NAS/SAN)
> > device/drive.  You can pick up a cheap NAS (enclosure + bios etc) for
> > less than $100 at Microcenter or Frys.  Throw your hard drive in that
> > and get your data backed up much faster.
> >
> > Even better, pop the top and drop the second drive in it if you can
> > spare some downtime.
> >
> > -Jim P.
> 
> I'm not familiar with the cheap enclosures, but there is not a 1 TB
> drive yet, so you have to have Raid 0 (stripping) support to get a TB.
> 
> Same problem with connecting it directly to the IDE chain.
> 
> Fry's also has a Buffalo NAS Server with a TB.  Why do you think that
> would be faster?  I've never sent large volumes of data to a NAS
> server, but I can get 4 GB/min to a SATA 150, 3 GB/min to a ATA/100,
> and IIRC 2 GB/min to USB 2.
> 
> For all the above I'm doing a pure dd from the raw drive to a capture
> file.  Same as I plan to do Saturday.
> 
> Greg
> -- 
> Greg Freemyer
> The Norcross Group
> Forensics for the 21st Century
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