Re: Cloning an Amiga harddrive ?

[Bernd Sieker <bsieker%freenet.de@localhost>]

On 21.12.02, 23:37:15, webmaster%datazap.net@localhost wrote:
> Hi,
>
> [...]
> 
> 3) copy the files to the new drive.
> (This is where I am really unsure. In most examples that I have seen they
> say to use dump|restore. but I can't find an example that does not use a
> tape backup system. Also, I am not sure if this method will work with
> port-amiga. Plus, I don't have enough room left on the old hard drive to
> store a dump file. So, I thought that I would do is:

dump/restore is no problem at all. It is prefereable to tar, since it
handles hard links, which tar cannot.

If you restore to a new filesystem, mount it asynchronous, it is quite a
bit faster than even softdeps.

e. g. (assuming sd1a and sd1e are the new / and /usr filesystems,
respectively, and are already newfs'd.)

# mount -o async /dev/sd1a /mnt
# mount -o async /dev/sd1e /mnt/usr
# cd /mnt
# dump -0 -f - / | restore -rf -
# cd /mnt/usr
# dump -o -f - /usr | restore -rf -
# umount /mnt/usr
# umount /mnt

> 
> Then restart the computer after removing the old hard drive.
> 
> Will this work?
> 
> I should note that the first partition on this hard drive will be for the
> Amiga OS, and the hard drive was low level formated with a Mac.

Low-level formatting should not be needed at all. And it doesn't matter
on what system it was done, since it is a SCSI-command that works the
same on all systems, and the drive does the formatting itself.

> 
> Also is it really important to burn in a hard drive? I have seen several
> examples of scripts to do this lately.

Not at all. modern hard drives are ready for use as they are. I've never
heard of that at all. I'm sure the manufacturers would mention it.

I can't imagine what that would be supposed to do, except perhaps doing
a stress test to see if the drive is ok.

There really is nothing to "burn-in" on a hard drive, except the
semiconductor circuits, but the chip manufacturer will have done that
already, and you couldn't do it at home anyway, because this is done
with over-voltage and at higher temperatures.

> 
> Thanks,
> Al

-- 
Bernd Sieker

NetBSD: It spanks the knickers off those other operating systems
                -- Brian D Chase