Remote hdd cloning

August 16, 2007 by Michael

Some time ago i managed to clone the drive of my server over ssh. Although transmission was compressed with bzip2 it took awful long and i didn’t have a clue how long i would finally take.

Today i stumpled upon this post. The author uses a tool called pv: pv – monitor the progress of data through a pipe.

To clone a disk into a file over ssh:

dd if=/dev/hda bs=16065b | pv | gzip -c | ssh user@host "cat > clone.gz"

To restore the clone:

ssh user@host "gzip -d -c clone.gz" | pv | dd of=/dev/hda bs=16065b

Nevertheless, i mostly use

ssh foo@bar "dd if=/dev/sda | bzip2" > clone.bzip2

so i need not have my ssh private key laying around some server.

No comments yet

Post a Comment

Your email is never published. We need your name and email address only for verifying a legitimate comment. For more information, a copy of your saved data or a request to delete any data under this address, please send a short notice to michael@simons.ac from the address you used to comment on this entry.
By entering and submitting a comment, wether with or without name or email address, you'll agree that all data you have entered including your IP address will be checked and stored for a limited time by Automattic Inc., 60 29th Street #343, San Francisco, CA 94110-4929, USA. only for the purpose of avoiding spam. You can deny further storage of your data by sending an email to support@wordpress.com, with subject “Deletion of Data stored by Akismet”.
Required fields are marked *