Cloning raw disk

mamorim01

Member
Oct 11, 2020
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www.thegarage.space
So I am trying to clone a hard disk from another system (non IRIX, no label or volume header or known partition layout) using a raw data dump through dd. The drive is an old SCSI-1 model (Micropolis 1375) from a system I am trying to preserve, per another thread (https://forums.sgi.sh/index.php?threads/alpha-micro-1200.384/#post-2153). It is properly identified as ID 2 in the SCSI chain and recognized in hinv, the chain is properly terminated and no errors or warning messages can be seen anywhere.

Using IRIX 6.5, the drive shows up in /dev/rdsk but, seeing as it is not an IRIX partitioned disk, slices or partitions do not show up in /dev/dsk. That is to be expected.

Is it even possible to dump a raw image using dd? When I try to dd using /dev/rdsk/dks0d2vol as input it just finishes the operation with 0+0 records in / 0+0 records out, as shown in the image below. My goal was to get this raw image and eventually dump it on a SCSI2SD volume and have a backup if and when the real SCSI drive fails.

For what it is worth, I tried to achieve the same using Solaris on an old Sparcstation 2 and dd will not even start complaining about a missing or incorrect label, which is a somewhat similar situation only, in this case, IRIX does not show any error message, it just does not perform the operation.

Any tips would be most welcome.

 
Last edited:

Elf

Storybook / Retired, ex-staff
Feb 4, 2019
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Maybe try doing that dd from a Linux or BSD machine? I've dd'd raw disks several times on other platforms and could have reasonable confidence about it working there. I'm not sure what extra smarts Solaris and IRIX are trying to inject into the process, though...

Also if you are okay with filesystem level dumps, investigate dump / restore.

Good luck :)
 
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mamorim01

Member
Oct 11, 2020
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23
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Spain
www.thegarage.space
Thanks, I appreciate the thought. I think this is one of the features we have come to take for granted, and which did not use to work in the same way before. I have found a couple of old threads online which would confirm that, under Solaris, dd will not touch the drive if the drive is not labelled. I think the same applies to Irix as far as the lack of a volume header is concerned but, unfortunately, I could not find any reference online that would confirm it., even if my experience seems to point in that direction. I guess I was hoping to find some way to access the drive at a lower level than through /dev/rdisk.

Yes, I am confident that a modern linux distro will do the job. Alas, I would not have any modern computer at hand running linux other than a few raspberries and similar sbcs, nothing I could plug a SCSI adapter in. I am committed, though, so I will find parts and build something up. For what it is worth, I tried to boot both debian and redhat in the sparcstation but the kernel glitches out in both cases and refuses to run with no NVRAM settings (dried battery, etc). It is this type of quirks I would want to avoid having to deal with by using an already set up machine :)
 
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LarBob

Administrator
Feb 8, 2019
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I'm fairly certain those /dev/rdsk* devices will only work if there's a valid disk label, so you're gonna have no luck through IRIX most likely. You could try dumping the drive with NetBSD or something on the Indy instead if you don't want to get an adapter.
 
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