>>>>> "Denis" == Denis Heidtmann <denis.heidtm...@gmail.com> writes:
Denis> I am working with an old computer with custom hardware and SW Denis> than cannot be regenerated. We want to clone the HD so that if Denis> the existing one fails we have a chance of being able to continue Denis> using the system. The HD is 1G; the OS is Windows 3.1; the Denis> computer is a compaq. Denis> A clone was attempted to a 20G HD, but it will not boot (I forgot Denis> the error message, but it finally said not a system disk.) And Denis> at this point I do not know what SW was used to do the cloning. Denis> My first guess is that the BIOS cannot handle the drive, even Denis> though the cloning leaves only 1G available. Is this a likely Denis> explanation? My second guess is that perhaps Compaq did Denis> something non-standard to prevent drives other than theirs from Denis> being used. (They would not be the first nor the last company to Denis> be SOBs.) Denis> I have searched for ideas, but the answers are so varied that I Denis> do not know which ones to trust. Denis> Anybody here have suggestions? What cloning SW is suggested? ddrescue. On Debian/Ubuntu, it's called gddrescue these days. Figure out which drive is which, then do something like: ddrescue /dev/sdb image-of-my-disk.img ^ ^ | | from to Make sure that /dev/sdb is the disk you want to backup. You want it to be unmounted, or, mounted read-only (you don't want it changing while you image it, and/or, you don't want an image that looks like it's mounted as that will force a fsck). Once you have an image on a linux box as a file, you can try re-writing it over and over to a new hard disk. -- Russell Senior, President russ...@personaltelco.net _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug