Score:1

How to clone an external hard drive to another external hard drive

co flag

I have an external hard drive I need to backup to another external hard drive before performing filesystem operations on it. But all the questions and articles I have found so far have been for cloning internal system to an external hard drive, or for Windows.

It has multiple partitions of different filesystem types I intend to clone exactly to the second external hard drive.

Cheers

co flag
I s'pose I should delve into those questions and articles anyway and figure out if they are compatible with my problem, actually.
uz flag
Jos
Look into the `dd` command. Start with `man dd`. Use `if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb` if you want to copy the whole drive, not just separate filesystems. Proceed with caution.
David avatar
cn flag
Are the drives the exact same size?
co flag
They are the same size, yes. Well, both listed as such, let me check there wasn't any TiB vs TB weirdness.
oldfred avatar
cn flag
Note that if exact clone, you cannot reboot with both drive's connected. Duplicate UUIDs are not allowed. And if you do boot with both, one time, one drive may be updated & next time other drive updated, getting everything out of sync.
co flag
Oh, can I somehow change the UUID of one? Perhaps it would just be better to set up the partitions manually and copy all?
co flag
Curiously enough, the second hard drive is smaller by 512 bytes.
ar flag
Things become complicated if the original drive is bootable and you want the second drive to be bootable too. Particularly for EFI System Partition.
C.S.Cameron avatar
cn flag
Give dd a try, it seems to work for me even if the drive sizes are a bit off. GParted has an option to change UUID's. (You may then need to update fstab manually). Some people prefer Clonezilla for cloning drives
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