[GLLUG] Dual-Boot Copy?

[Mike Neir]

> Well, if we're talking about *nix filesystems, I prefer rsync because I
> can run it against an active drive at a low priority to get all the data
> moved and then whenever I need to clean it up I can just run rsync again
> to get the stuff that changed.  With dd you have to have the filesystem
> offline to duplicate it and restore it.  I don't like that kind of
> downtime.

I agree, but from the description of the problem, he's copying the drive 
on a workstation. It's not a server in a production environment or 
anything. He could easily start the process when he goes to bed one 
night and have it complete by the time he wakes up. Remove old drive, 
boot computer, done.

> Also, maybe I'm ol' school, but resizing a partition is not something I
> take lightly.  I think the potential for massive data loss is high.  IMHO,
> working within the filesystem is safer than doing tricks at the hardware
> level.  If I had a system that isn't critical, then I might view it
> differently, but currently all my systems are critical and I don't like to
> flirt with data loss on them.  YMMV.

While this is also true, he's going to have the original drive, so if 
something catastrophic does happen, he can just run the copy again.