Unix disk copy using dd ?

[David Comley]

--- Doc Shipley <doc at mdrconsult.com> wrote:

> > Can you copy an entire disk using the UNIX dd
> command from a smaller 
> > disc to
> > a larger one and retain the capacity of the larger
> drive?
> 
>    Not without other tools, at least on any OS I
> work with.  dd 
> overwrites the filesystem's index, superblock, etc,
> so even if the 
> partition is bigger than the filesystem, you can't
> use it.

dd also seems to have some implementation-specifics
baked into it. On Solaris I was completely unable to
transfer a raw VMS disk image from one drive to
another (identical) one using dd; however the same
transfer worked correctly under Linux.

-Dave