[PLUG] Damned Small USB or better?

[chris (fool) mccraw]

On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 00:23, Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com> wrote:

I'm that jerk who questions your methods instead of answering your question.

>  D.S.Linux runs dd to clone the main hard
> drive to an identical hard drive in an external SATA cradle, then
> shuts down.

dd is hardly the fastest way to copy data.  i see what you're going
for, though--obviously rsync or similar "don't copy already-same
areas" tool won't necessarily create a bootable copy of windows.  i
didn't find any tools like dd+xdelta out there but there must be a
more efficient tool...does something like ghost (non free, but if
you're dealing with windows anyway...) do that?  i can't imagine that
95% of the disk changes each usage, so it seems like an area of this
process rich for optimization.  i wonder if you have already optimized
partition size down to the bare minimum and just dd that partition?
seems like optimizing boot time when it must be such a tiny part of
the time taken to make the copy is ignoring amdahl's argument that one
should optimize the slowest thing first rather than the easiest...

sorry i don't have an actual answer for you :(

luck++;