duplicate a Linux system disk

[Tracy R Reed]

Neil Schneider wrote:
> Well that may be what the specs say, but real life experience says
> different. In my experience, transfering IDE drives using dd on the
> same controller will take overnight to complete, and there may be
> multiple errors. Comparable transfers using scsi will take hours.
> Drive size and speed all enter into the equation.

Note that with SATA each disk has its own dedicated controller.

> Speed continues to improve but the drive sizes increase at the same
> time. I can't prove what I wrote, I can only report my experience.

Drive size is increasing far faster than speed. That's a problem. Not 
only is that a problem but an even bigger problem is that reliability is 
not really increasing at all. This article:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=162

says that in 2009 it may be impossible to recover a 12T RAID array due 
to the unrecoverable read error rate of a drive.

-- 
Tracy R Reed                  Read my blog at http://ultraviolet.org
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