If the drives are IDENTICAL (i.e: manufacturer and model number and size), AND you boot the new drive in the SAME hardware box, then yes, IT MIGHT WORK - but no guarantees. The reason (I was told - but am not sure) is that windows places information in blocks that are not part of the file system, and so they are invisible to the FS. Furthermore, when copying, as with dd, from one windows disk to another, will not guarantee that these hidden information blocks will end up in the same block address on the neww drive. Why? because each HD has it's own bad blocks and reserved set of blocks for bad block forwarding during low level format. When windows gets installed, it locates reserverd block addresses and uses them for such a scheme - and since the addresses of these reserved blocks are different from disk to disk, windows will detect that it is a clone. Please be aware that I am only paraphrasing what I was told. I do not know in fact if this is true. Good Luck, Markus ---------------------------------------- > Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:01:37 -0400 > From: curoli@xxxxxxxxx > To: fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx > Subject: Copying a Hard Disk Containing Windows With Fedora > > Dear friends, > > I need to copy the hard disk of a Windows computer to a new hard > disk of equal size. I was thinking of connecting both drives > (SATA/150), booting from the Fedora 8 Rescue Disk and then do > > dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb > > in hope that after that, the second hard disk can be used in place > of the first one (including booting Windows, of course). > > Does this work? Thanks! > > Take care > Oliver > > -- > Oliver Ruebenacker, Post-Doc Researcher > Center for Cell Analysis and Modelling > http://www.ccam.uchc.edu/ > > -- > fedora-list mailing list > fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx > To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list _________________________________________________________________ Climb to the top of the charts! Play the word scramble challenge with star power. http://club.live.com/star_shuffle.aspx?icid=starshuffle_wlmailtextlink_jan
