Cloning hard drives using OS X... best solution?

jutus

Right now we clone hard drives using a duping station consisting of a G4 with a Firewire card so that we have a total of 5 (target) firewire drives attached. We dup the drive using block writes from the terminal. We need to clone 40 Gb disks.. does anyone have a better solution for this kind of thing?



Disk Copy seems to have a 2 Gb file size limit.



Help! <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

mjpaci

the unix "tar" command might work as well rather than the block copies.



--Mike

ghost_user_name

I'm not sure you want to use tar on an HFS file system.

seb

Not sure what you're trying to do, exactly. Or if this will help but...



We use Filewave on several hundred Macs. It's a way to remotely install and update systems, apps, etc. It works on OS 9 and X. We haven't gotten around to testing the X version yet. The 9 version works pretty well, all things considered...



Having this many people, we hit a small snag every now and then, but I wouldn't want to be without it. I think most of our problems are due to our admin, but I didn't say that. Makes updating apps a relative breeze and has a lot of options.



<a href="http://www.filewave.com/products/index.html"; target="_blank">http://www.filewave.com/products/index.html</a>;



Asset Trustee, on the other hand, is kinda hinky though.



I don't know how many Macs you have, but they offer a free, unlimited 10 user trial. Unfortunately people took advantage of it, so it's not so easy to download anymore.



<a href="http://www.filewave.com/download/index.html"; target="_blank">http://www.filewave.com/download/index.html</a>;



However, they are a good company, with good support. Hell, they already have an X client. They'll hook you up with it if you work with them.



[ 01-08-2002: Message edited by: seb ]</p>

ghost_user_name

Seems like you could write a shell script to help automate it. Maybe that would help.

onlooker

I'm not sure if this is relevent, but I just ordered a 120GB HD, and I would like to export the contents of my current drive onto the new one just like it is, and start up like I was using the same drive. Is that possible. I've never done this one before. Can you tell?

reg

Quote:

Originally posted by onlooker

I'm not sure if this is relevent, but I just ordered a 120GB HD, and I would like to export the contents of my current drive onto the new one just like it is, and start up like I was using the same drive. Is that possible. I've never done this one before. Can you tell?

I am getting ready to do the same for my PB 500. Did you get a response to this?



reg

pyr3

They have those new Gentoo PPC LiveCDs (Gentoo is a Linux distro, and a LiveCD means the entire installation of Linux can run off the CD with the normally 'main' harddrive as a secondary device). You could use a linux/unix program to export it to other drives. Just boot from the LiveCD. They have a Gnome and a KDE cd (Gnome and KDE are window managers for X11 , well they are more than they, but that's the quickest way to describe them). I think this might be the best solution... well it should be the best solution in the case of 'onlooker' and 'reg' methinks.

reg

Quote:

Originally posted by pyr3

They have those new Gentoo PPC LiveCDs (Gentoo is a Linux distro, and a LiveCD means the entire installation of Linux can run off the CD with the normally 'main' harddrive as a secondary device). You could use a linux/unix program to export it to other drives. Just boot from the LiveCD. They have a Gnome and a KDE cd (Gnome and KDE are window managers for X11 , well they are more than they, but that's the quickest way to describe them). I think this might be the best solution... well it should be the best solution in the case of 'onlooker' and 'reg' methinks.

I am going from a 20 gig to 60 gig. The 20 has almost 18 gig of data. Will this program handle something this large?



reg

pyr3

Quote:

Originally posted by reg

I am going from a 20 gig to 60 gig. The 20 has almost 18 gig of data. Will this program handle something this large?



reg

It's not a program. It's an entire Linux Operating System on a bootable CD. So you'd be running Linux off of a CD and all your system files on the harddrive would be free. None of that 'file is in use' stuff. :P I don't know how well this would work though. I'm hoping that others will chime in here.

ena

There is a program called Carbon Copy Cloner that a lot of people rave about.

tulkas

CCC works great. I used it for my father's Sawtooth when he wanted to add a new 40 gig drive. I cloned the original drive over to the new one, wiped the partitions on the original drive and was all set.

reg

Quote:

Originally posted by Tulkas

CCC works great. I used it for my father's Sawtooth when he wanted to add a new 40 gig drive. I cloned the original drive over to the new one, wiped the partitions on the original drive and was all set.

Thanks. I just downloaded CCC. Have to wait till Tuesday for the drive to come in.



reg

reg

I used CCC to clone the old drive and the new one got all the info. There is one little difference though. When the PB is asleep with the lid/cover shut and plugged in it will wake when the top is opened, same as it always did. Now if it was asleep and not plugged in, I have to press the return key to wake the PB after opening the lid. There is nothing about this in the energy saver section of system preferences. Anyone have any idea where I should look to change this?



reg