Create a compressed disk image: dd if=/dev/hda1 | gzip > /home/hda1.bin.gz
Back up the MBR: dd if=/dev/hda of=/home/hda.boot.mbr bs=512 count=1
Restore MBR (from a Live CD): dd if=/mnt/hda1/home/hda.boot.mbr of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
Backup a drive to another drive: dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb conv=noerror,sync bs=4k
The command:
dd -if /dev/hda1 > partitionimage.dd
will backup "/dev/hda1" partition. A whole drive (including the MBR) could be backed up using just /dev/hda as the input "file". Restoring is done by: dd -if partitionimage.dd -of /dev/hda1
If you have a complete new harddrive and want to restore the backup (or copy your old system to the new drive). First, the new drive has to be bigger or exactly the same size as the old one. First go superuser and switch to runlevel 1 so that you can fumble around with the harddisk without other services interfering
restore either the whole disk to the new drive or one partition (depending on how you made the backup): dd -if partitionimage.dd -of /dev/hda1
If you restored the whole drive (/dev/hda), the system will not automatically create the devices (/dev/hda1, /dev/hda2) if you just restored the whole drive. If you know how to make the devices show up without reboot, write it here, otherwise this is a good moment to reboot.
If you restored the system to a new drive, and your device names changed (for example from /dev/hda to /dev/sda) then you must adapt the bootloader and the mount points. While still on runlevel 1, edit these files:
/boot/grub/menu.list
/etc/fstab
After your system is able to boot and runs again, you can resize your partitions to fill the rest of the new harddisk (if you want that) as described here
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source:http://linuxpoison.blogspot.com/2009/04/13578175711451.html