How To: Cloning Disks

Date: 2nd March 2005, Revised 20th November 2007
Author: Con Validas

Overview

This document details the steps involved in cloning our master software image.

1. Ensure that the cloning computer is powered Off, and the primary master disk is attached.
2. Attach a Master Drive and a Slave Drive to the secondary IDE cable.
3. Power on the computer. Linux will boot into the graphical user interface.
4. Press Ctrl-Alt-F1 simultaneously to take you to the terminal console.
5. Login is root, password is cbvsys
6. Type the following at the prompt to start the clone process:  ./clone_disk_multi.sh This script copies data from the primary master to the secondary master (and slave if attached). This process will take about 15 minutes.
7. When you see the message 'All Done' and you have a root prompt (#), type halt to shutdown machine.
8. Remove the drives from the secondary IDE cable, make sure you change the slaves HDD to a master drive.
9. Mark the disk as Clone xx/xx/xx, where xx is to be replaced with the date.
10. Place the cloned hard drive/s in clone storage.

Notes and Tips

Ctrl-Ctrl   to switch to other cloning computer

Clues that a hard drive are faulty: noisy, errors like: DriveReady SeekComplete, I/O error. These are visible in the system logs e.g. dmesg | grep hd 

If they happen with a Western Digital drive jumpered as Master, change to Cable Select.  Sometimes that will 'fix' the problem.