copying partitions from sata to sata

[C M Reinehr]

On Tuesday 15 January 2008 11:24, Vu Pham wrote:
> C M Reinehr wrote:
> > On Tuesday 15 January 2008 09:00, Vu Pham wrote:
> >> My notebook has a 80G sata drive with one partition of Windows. I have
> >> another 120G sata drive which I would like to move my Windows on the
> >> first drive to, shrink it to 60G and use the remaining 60G for Linux.
> >>
> >> Because these two drives are sata interface so I think I can connect
> >> both of them to my desktop which is Suse Linux and copying the Windows
> >> partition over. Which tool on Linux allows me to copy partitions from
> >> one drive to another drive ?
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >>
> >> Vu
> >
> > That would be dd or, maybe, partimage.
>
> Can I use dd ? Do I have to care about the disk geometry C/H/S of the
> two drives may be not the same ?
>
> Vu

You certainly could copy a partition over from one drive to another with dd, 
but you would have to manually write the partition table on the second drive. 
Or, alternatively, create a new partition on the second drive with cfdisk 
(fdisk, sfdisk, etc.) _exactly_ the same size as the original partition and 
then use dd to overlay the new partition with the contents of the old 
partition. I'm sure this would work with Linux, but have no idea what 
problems might occur trying this with a Windows partition.

cmr

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