Re: How do I "see" a hard drive?

"JohnW" <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
If try to run fdisk in any of the forms that anyone has mentioned so far I
simply get "bash: fdisk: command not found"

Maybe it's not in the path. On my Debian box I have "/sbin/mac-fdisk".

1. Can I actually get a directory listing?

You would have to mount the partition first.

I've tried most of the "mount"
options you've all suggested here's a few of the results:-
I type: mount /dev/hda3
response: mount: can't find /dev/hda3 in /etc/fstab or /etc/mtab

Then you have to specify at least also the mount point (e.g.,
/mnt/hda3), i.e.,

mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/hda3

Add -t <fstype> and -o ro as appropriate.

I type: mkdir /mnt/hda2
response: mkdir: cannot create directory '/mnt/hda2': Permission Denied

You probably need to be root to do this, and to mount the partition.

2. Anton suggested using dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/sda to copy the whole lot to
an external hard drive. I have a big enough drive with plenty of space on it
but it's not empty.

That command will destroy what's on the drive.

This is my backup disk - will I be able to do what I
need to without destroying the data that's already on there?

You can do that by mounting a partition from the backup drive with
enough free space, and then copying the hard disk contents to a file.

If you want compression, you can do it with

dd if=/dev/hda|gzip -c >/mnt/sda1/hda-image.gz

The USB drive is formatted as FAT32 (so that I can use it on
a variety of computers in the house) is this a problem?

I believe that FAT32 does not support files >2GB (not sure, though),
so you may want to split the file into, say, 1GB chunks, with
something like:

dd if=/dev/hda|gzip -c|split -b 1024m - /mnt/sda1/hda-image.gz.

The reverse operation is:

cat /mnt/sda1/hda-image.gz.*|gzip -cd|dd of=/dev/hda

You might want to check that it works while you still have the old disk:

cat /mnt/sda1/hda-image.gz.*|gzip -cd|diff --report-identical-files - /dev/hda

Caution: all untested.

- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed
anton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html
.

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