Best method to clone a BeOS drive?

1

I am using Zeta(I assume same applies to BeOS)

whats the best method to clone a BeOS drive?

can you use XP programs like Drive Copy 9.0 , installed on a XP laptop,

can I backup (the BeOS 80 gig HD )via a USB adapter attached to XP laptop ?

2

I have an eeepc and when I play (read intend destroying the disk), I first do a complete dump. The SSD is only 4G.

dd if=/path/to/your/drive/device/to/backup of=/path/to/backup/drive/file.img

obviously replacing the paths with the correct devices (check mount for the device).

This will be an exact copy, warts and all.

I use this all the time (but more a backup rather than cloning).

Cheers,
Jeff

3

The simplest way (in R5 and IIRC, Zeta) to clone a drive is with the Installer by setting the source drive for Installer to the drive you wish to clone and some other partition for the destination. Another option is to just copy files over – I normally use Tracker to copy the contents of /boot/home to /destination/home and then the contents of /boot (excluding /boot/home) to /destination. Of course, if you’re looking to automatically clone a BeOS partition, you’ll want to use a shell script in combo with the copyattr command. To back up your installation to some partition used by other operating systems (Window$, Linux, etc.) you’ll want to use the dd command stuff mentioned above in order to preserve your files’ attributes.

4

If you are gonna use the ‘dd’ make yourself a favor, change the block size to read and write. The default is 512 bytes and will take for ever to copy 80GB (too many systems calls). You can add ‘bs=32M’ to speed up the process and i guess you have 32MB of ram to waste for a few minutes…

5

I don’t know if it works on Zeta, but CreateDeviceImage (http://www.bebits.com/app/139) has worked for me on BeOS.