How to copy entire operation system to another place without `dd`

How to copy entire operation system to another place without command dd.

For example, you bought a new hard disk, but there were no OS. You wanted to copy all the file to the new disk, even the entire OS.

How to do that?

rsync

This command can be used to synchronize a folder, and also resume copying when it’s aborted half way. The command to copy one disk is:

rsync -avxHAX --progress / /new-disk/

The options are:

-a  : all files, with permissions, etc..
-v  : verbose, mention files
-x  : stay on one file system
-H  : preserve hard links (not included with -a)
-A  : preserve ACLs/permissions (not included with -a)
-X  : preserve extended attributes (not included with -a)

To improve the copy speed, add -W (–whole-file), to avoid calculating deltas/diffs of the files. This is the default when both the source and destination are specified as local paths, since the real benefit of rsync’s delta-transfer algorithm is reducing network usage.

Also consider adding –numeric-ids to avoid mapping uid/gid values by user/group name.

Step1. Copy File

Just use this sample command to copy entire file to another place:

$ rsync -avxHAXW --progress --numeric-ids /old-disk/ /new-disk/

Step2. Boot Repair

Then to boot your ‘new’ operation system, you also need repair your grub.

Download boot-repair or boot-repair-disk to fix your new os.

What’s More

You can use this command to synchronize any file, even to copy a virtual disk to a physical disk! Nothing different between your virtual machine and your physical machine.