Four tools for cloning hard disks

Clone Wars

Article from Issue 142/2012
Author(s):

Is your hard disk making strange noises? Do you intend to make some major hardware changes? Maybe it’s high time to clone your disk. Four tools help Linux users and system administrators move their data and create one-to-one copies.

Whether a John Doe user is planning to tinker with hardware at home or a Linux admin needs to create a server farm with identical virtualized installations, sooner or later, most users face the challenge of mirroring hard disks. When doing so, it’s a good idea to approach dd with some respect. Although the tool is always ready to serve, carelessness can cause irreparable damage. If you don’t have good backups in this case, you can forget your data while you rebuild the system.

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