Re: how to use dd command

serge wrote:

What is to be the exact dd command to copy the entire partition(fat32) to ext3.

If you're copying from FAT32 to ext3, dd is not the best utility to choose, IMHO. You'd be better off using cp or rsync or any of the other utilities that operate on files. E.g., 'cp -a /mnt/x/* /mnt/somwhere/'.

Use dd to copy the entire FAT32 filesystem (including filesystem metadata) from one raw device to another. E.g., 'dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdb1' (assuming the existing FAT32 filesystem is on /dev/sda1 and you want to copy it to /dev/sdb1---adjust to suit your setup). Then you can mount /dev/sdb1 just as you would with /dev/sda1.

You may find that adding a bs= parameter to set block size speeds things up. Experiment to find the best block size for your situation. E.g., 'dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdb1 bs=512k'.

If your hardware is buggy, you may find that adding conv=noerror is helpful. (Note that you might loose data in the middle of one file, but at least subsequent files should be OK.)

This is block to block copy or sth like that.

Yes, dd will make an exact block by block copy---which is why it's better suited to making copies of whole filesystems from one device to another and not for copying files from one filesystem to another.
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