Momentus XT, Momentus, Momentus Thin, MobileMax, and other notebook drives

[WatsaScreenName]

I just cloned two partitions from a resident HDD to an auxiliary Momentus XL HDD in an enclosure that is connected to the computer via eSATA.  Is there a way to compare each cloned partition with its original for integrity?  If this were just a file, I'd use a unix/cygwin utility like diff or cmp.  However, it is a partition.

[frief]

> If this were just a file, I'd use a unix/cygwin utility like diff or cmp.  However, it is a partition.

cmp works perfectly on partitions (complete disks, floppies, cdroms, usb memory sticks or any block device) as well.

(diff would too but expects text input).

Use something like:

# cmp /dev/sda1 /dev/sdx1

(eventually add option --verbose)

Useful to see the partitioning:

# fdisk -l

Cloning itself would be done for complete disks by something like:

# dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdx bs=16M

If you don't have unix installed using this live-cd http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SystemRescueCD

will do fine (of course there are nice others too).

Greetings

[WatsaScreenName]

I have cygwin, but all the commands you listed seem to require /dev/sda.  I only have the following in /dev : fd@  mqueue/  shm/  stderr@  stdin@  stdout

I thought /dev/fd was fixed-disk, and "ls /dev/fd/" shows: 0@  1@  2@  3@  4@

"ls /dev/fd/1/" returns: "ls: cannot access /dev/dd: No such file or directory".  The same for all the numbers 0 through 4.

"ls -l /dev/fd/1" returns: "/dev/fd/1 -> /dev/tty0", as does all the numbers 0 through 4 (all pointing to tty0).

Is there something needed to make partitions visible on /dev ?  Note that of the 4 partitions I will clone, only one of them is a letter-drive.

A respondent elsewhere explained that most Windows installs have 100MB as first partition for booting (SRP) and the 2nd partition for C-drive (the letter-drive).  Toshiba has a 1.5GB partition 1, and adds partitions 3 & 4 for recovery, which I also want to clone and to verify through comparison.

Since I'm new to partitioning and cloning, I'm using Norton Ghost 15 ghosting and Windows 7 Disk Management for partition adjustment.  I may experiment with dd if the /dev/sda gets solved, and HDD prices go down.

[WatsaScreenName]

Looks like the problem may be insurmountable. Most comparison apps deal with files and folders, which are constructs of file systems. Three of the four partitions I'll be cloning don't have NTFS (don't know what they have -- one is for booting among other things, two are "Hidden Installed File Systems") nor letter drives. I don't believe that I can even mount them or assign a drive letter to them. Surfing gives me the impression (only an impression) that you can't mount non-NTFS, and "you cannot assign a drive letter to an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) partition or any GUID Partition Table (GPT) partition other than a basic MSDATA partition".

Sigh. Maybe it's time to give up on this.