OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Storage => Topic started by: christech on October 14, 2022, 07:40:38 pm

Title: Cloning a drive
Post by: christech on October 14, 2022, 07:40:38 pm
Has anyone successfully cloned a drive to a larger drive with ArcaOS installed on it? My laptop's drive is too small and I don't want to reinstall everything. Planning on going from 128GB to 256 or 512GB.
Title: Re: Cloning a drive
Post by: Sean Casey on October 14, 2022, 08:36:12 pm
I have read in this forum people successfully cloning drives using DFSee.   

I have cloned OS/2 two different ways, once using Acronis Cyber Backup 12.5 with a bit-stream backup where the target remained the same partition size for OS/2.  The second method I made a zip backup of the source OS/2 partition.  I then did a fresh install of OS/2 into a second (i.e., D-drive) partition on a new drive.  Booting into OS/2, I formatted a larger C-drive partition and then restored my OS/2 backup.  I was using the AiR-BOOT manager.
Title: Re: Cloning a drive
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on October 14, 2022, 08:37:27 pm
Yes, it works well with DFSee.
Title: Re: Cloning a drive
Post by: Pete on October 14, 2022, 10:33:58 pm
Hi

If I remember correctly a *clone* is the same size as the original.

I think you have to use the copy command in DFSee to "clone" a smaller drive/partition to a larger drive/partition.

If you find yourself getting confused I find Jan is very quick at providing the answer(s) by email - as long as you have Registered DFSee.


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: Cloning a drive
Post by: Dave Yeo on October 14, 2022, 10:56:54 pm
The simplest is to just copy over the partition using xcopy. Assumes you can have both drives hooked up at the same time, but so does cloning.
Assuming your install is on C:. install the 2nd SSD and format it and give it a drive letter such as D: Best to do all this from the install stick's maintenance desktop.
Code: [Select]
xcopy c:\* d:\ /h /o /t /s /e /r /v
Rearrange your SSD and change the drive letter to C:. You might have to run sysinstx to make it bootable and perhaps install Airboot.
Title: Re: Cloning a drive
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on October 14, 2022, 11:09:48 pm
Has anyone successfully cloned a drive to a larger drive with ArcaOS installed on it?...

Are you looking to preserve the ArcaOS and somehow "migrate" your existing app install over to that new ArcaOS partition?

If that's the case, well, you simply can't do that, not for probably vast majority of apps. Simply moving them over to the ArcaOS partition won't bring all the other settings that may have been stored in the OS/2 INI files (OS2SYS and OS2).

ArcaN was contemplating developing a migration path, but I'm fairly certain that is absolutely the lowest priority in terms of all the things they want to do.
Title: Re: Cloning a drive
Post by: Mo on October 15, 2022, 09:35:05 am
Hello,

years ago i used https://clonezilla.org/ (https://clonezilla.org/) to copy/clone entire HDD with multiple OS installations (OS2, Win, Linux) or partitions to a new (bigger) HDD. I remember it being very easy and fast.

Bests
Title: Re: Cloning a drive
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on October 15, 2022, 03:40:12 pm
I do it a lot, since that's how I manufacture laptops and desktops.

I boot from ArcaOS media, and back up all drives. You back up anyway, right? I use zip version 3, with flags qryS to also copy links and system files.

Then I install the new drive, partition and restore using unzip version 6.

Not only does this give a lot of versatility on drive layout, but it tests my backup and restore capability.
Title: Re: Cloning a drive
Post by: Doug Bissett on October 16, 2022, 04:34:38 am
I do it a lot, since that's how I manufacture laptops and desktops.

I boot from ArcaOS media, and back up all drives. You back up anyway, right? I use zip version 3, with flags qryS to also copy links and system files.

Then I install the new drive, partition and restore using unzip version 6.

Not only does this give a lot of versatility on drive layout, but it tests my backup and restore capability.

I agree, that this 9s the way to do it. I have done this many times, with good results.