Re: Cloning an Amiga harddrive ?

["webmaster%datazap.net@localhost" <webmaster%datazap.net@localhost>]

Hi,

On Sun, 22 Dec 2002, Bernd Sieker wrote:

> > [...]
> >
> > 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

This sounds pretty strait forward. Although, I would like to add a
separate partition for /var. Right now I don't have one. Could I mount
that partition, and use dump|restore just like you described above?

> > 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.

This is what I thought. I just wanted to make sure, because I thought
that modern hard drives didn't need to be low-level formatted ever. The
computer store that I bought the hard drive from did this to test it.
They also installed Mac system 8 and who knows what else, but this
really shouldn't be a problem either.

> > 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.

Hard drive burn in is talking about writing the hard drive full in order
to test it. I guess that it is supposed to be more stressful than normal
operation, and from what I have been able to read a hard drive is more
likely to fail when writing to the tracks at the end of the drive.

I have a book ("Unix Hinks and Hacks") that gives several examples of
scripts to do what it calls hard drive "burn-in" (although, I don't
understand a one of them), and it makes it sound very important. But I
don't think that have ever heard of anyone done this type of a test.

If I have time I will probably do some kind of test on the hard
drive, because it is a used drive.

Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it,
Al