Disk image copy

[CaKiwi]

I have a disk which is failing intermittently and I would like to install a second disk and make an image copy of it before it fails completely. What is the best way to do this? I am looking at volcopy or volcopy_ufs.
It is on a Sun Sparcstation 5 running SunOS 5.5.1

Thanks in advance.

CaKiwi

 

[tuka]

If the new disk is the same size (geometry) or if the new disk is larger you can dd. If the new disk is larger then
the dd operation will make it the same size as the orignal.

dd if=/dev/rdsk/cXtXd0s2 of=/dev/rdsk/cXtXd0s2 bs=256k
if= originale disk
of= new disk
cX = controller #
tX = scsi id #
bs = 256k (if you have a lot of RAM you can increase)

After dd'ing the disk swap them and you are set. Test
by booting.

If the disks are not the same size another method can be used.

 

[CaKiwi]

Thanks for the reply

I tried dd as you suggested but it got an error saying that it encountered a short write. One problem is that the new disk is slightly smaller than the old one.

I am trying volcopy at the moment with no errors so far.

CaKiwi

 

[tuka]

As stated the new disk must be equal or greater in size to use the dd command.

Don't forget you will have to make the new disk bootable.
See man pages for installboot

Also on this site there are examples of ufsdump and ufsrestore to do this task. Search (keyword) for ufsdump and ufsrestore examples.

 

[CaKiwi]

Just an update in case anyone is interested. volcopy just sat there and glared at me and I finally had to kill it. I tried the ufsdump piped to ufsrestore which copied the files but I could not make the disk bootable. I finally discovered that the new disk was partitioned differently from the old one. When I corrected that, I used dd to copy the files and it was relatively smooth sailing from there.

Thanks for the suggestions.

CaKiwi