On Fri, 7 Nov 1997, Rick Copeland wrote:

> I have a Sun 3/80 that is running nicely and I would like to make an exact
> copy of the hard disk drives for a second one that I have purchased.  So, is
> it possible some how to copy an entire hard disk drive (I mean everything
> including boot blocks, etc.) over to a new hard disk drive?

/bin/dd, buddy, /bin/dd.  But, beware the ESP fifo re-select bug.  Make
sure that both the source and destination drive are at SCSI ID 3 or below.
If either drive is at ID 4 or above, re-selection will be enabled for that
drive and some 10 blocks into the transfer you will experience many 
``esp0: RESELECT, x bytes in FIFO!'' errors.  (This warning only applies
if you will be copying the drives with your 3/80.)

Driver bugs aside, you can copy whole disks with /bin/dd.

        source       destination  (copy 128k at a time if possible)
  dd if=/dev/sdXX of=/dev/sdXX    bs=128k

The block size parameter doesn't matter that much.  However, if you make
it too small, your transfer may take longer.  You also should make sure
that neither the source or destination drive is currently mounted on your
filesystem before you begin.

-J