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This method copies contents of a partition.  The target partition must be 
at least as large as the source.

We used DOS PQMagic to shrink XP on the 20GB drive to a 6GB partition, and 
copied to a preformatted and bootable (active) 6GB partition on a 6GB 
drive.  Defragmented first (and ran XPLITE to remove about 1/3 of files, 
mostly uninstall/backup).  Both drives should have same file system (NTFS 
in our case).  There are also free programs for shrinking partitions. 
Ranish appears to not do NTFS, and UBCD programs did not find the hard 
drives (we are not sure how they work).

Plug in both drives as primary and secondary master.  (Or on the same 
cable but it goes slower).

Boot with BL3 disk 1, hit Ctrl-C instead of putting in second disk (which 
has X and modules and browser).  (Instead of using a linux live CD such as 
knoppix or DSL, as described online, with sudo).

Copy the files block by block (not as files)

dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdc1  (and optionally bs=XXXX)

It would go faster with bs= defined (use hdparm to determine the block 
size, or look it up for that drive), and 32bit mode (hdparm -c1) and dma 
(-d1).  It took me an hour to copy 4GB with the slow defaults.  It took 
someone 5 hours for 20GB.  They say 15-30 minutes with Norton Ghost.

hdparm -i /dev/hda gives me BuffSize=2048kB - is this bs?

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc bs=466 count=1
Copies the MBR.

(If the two drives are identical you can instead of the two operations do
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdc with no count.)

Replace the first drive with the second.  It boots and comments on finding 
a new device (the hard drive).

A 27-page site about dd suggests also rejuvenating drives by doing
dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hda
(http://flifl.com/cms1demo/page_243.php

The data grow into larger magnetic flux points when the drive is not used 
for a few years.  (Is this what makes it clunk?).  If Sector 1 is affected 
you cannot boot - this might fix nonbooting drives.  (bs=512 count=1?)
"It rewrites the data in nice tight magnetic patterns that can be read 
properly."  I will try this on drives with FAT problems.

They suggest backing up XP using dd (to another partition) instead of 
frequent reinstalls, or cloning with Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image, 
Drive Image....  (The one I looked at was 8MB).


Sindi Keesan