On 2015-05-26 15:09, jdd wrote:
I guess I will have to use dd, but I know it for being dauntingly slow and wonder if there is not a best way.
dd? dd is as fast at it can be. You have to write, and write is the same speed in any program. Maybe... ok, dd has to copy even the empty sectors. Clonezilla skips them if it knows the filesystem format. I have done this. Source and target being the same size, I would do a brute force 'dd' of the entire disk. This way Windows does not notice that the disk has changed (it looks at an identifier in the partition table). Otherwise, you have to clone the partition table exactly, then 'dd' each partition individually. If grub image was installed on the "extended" partition, you even have to dd it. This is preferable if you want to skip a partition, because it is damaged or something.
I found that
sfdisk -d /dev/sdX | sfdisk /dev/sdY
could copy the partition table to the new disk.
Then I could use rsync?
For Windows, no, it will not boot.
But will this copy the file system?? if not (I guess not), will mkfs.ntfs and mkfs.vfat make usable systems for partitions 1, 2 and 4?
No, create ntfs partitions using Windows. If you need to copy files, consider that rsync will not see the windows native attributes.
will the resulting disk be bootable on windows?
No. With rsync, no.
I have also questions about booting windows and license updating, but it's probably not the good place.
It is an identifier in the partition table.
do you have any experience on this? If I need to use dd, what are the best options for speed?
I have done it. Just dd source to dest, and go out for lunch, a walk, sleep, whatever. It is impossible to copy faster, it goes at maximum cable speed. If the machine is in use, there are options to tell dd not to use the cache, which makes the rest of the system more responsive. Try "oflag=direct". Perhaps "nocache". -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)