Problem with dd 5.97 (Ubuntu 7)

[Ernie Limperis]

I had a strange problem with an apparent silent failure of dd to clone a 
Windows-partitioned
disk yesterday.

Environment:  Ubuntu Linux, kernel 2.6.20-16-generic #2 SMP
              AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+
              1G ram
              dd version 5.97

Disks:  Source: Seagate 60GB, about five years old, /dev/hdc
        Target: Western Digital 80GB, new OEM., /dev/hdd
        both IDE on a VIA controller (Asus M2V-TVM motherboard,
            chipset = K8M890/VT8327R Plus)

Source Partition Table:  something like this

   /dev/hdc1 *  1        1530          SFS
   /dev/hdc2    1530    <end of disk>  Win95 LBA
   /dev/hdc5    #
   /dev/hdc6    #  all Extended partitions, type SFS
   /dev/hdc7    #  roughly equal sized at 10GB
   /dev/hdc8    #


Command:  dd if=/dev/hdc of=/dev/hdd conv=notrunc,noerror bs=32768  # also 
occured with bs=4096

Behavior:  On multiple attempts, dd copied as far as hdc6 then exited with no
error, reporting the full 60GB copy.   fdisk on the target showed hdd7 as 
taking up the rest of
the disk with an "empty" device type. Read errors appeared at roughly 30 GB 
because of
bad sectors on the source, but the copy process continued as documented.  
Partition-by-partition
dd worked fine (except for the read errors on one partition).


--
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Ernie Limperis                    510-525-8801
address@hidden              cell 510-682-6373
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