Using a Linux Live CD to clone XP An installed Windows XP protects itself from being cloned even for the backup purpose. Specialised software like the Norton Ghost or PowerQuest Drive Image has to be used so that the OS can be moved to a bigger hard drive in a hard disk upgrade. I know Linuxs dd command also works but this needed to be performed on the whole hard disk so that the MBR and partition table are cloned as one whole lot. This is only successful for source and target disks having identical size. The method described below shows how Linux can be used to clone a XP partition. In the example here the source is a XP Pro partition in a 30Gb IDE drive recognised by Linux as hda1. For simplicity I used a disk with just one partition in it. The source XP partition has a SATA driver previously incorporated when installed. The target is a brand new unformatted 200 Gb SATA disk recognised by Linux as hde. To demonstrate the power of Linux I use only a Live CD from Knoppix 3.4. There is no other bootable Linux in sight. (1) Install both source IDE (hda) and SATA (hde) disks into the PC and boot the computer up with Knoppix Live CD. (2) Click Knoppixs terminal mode, type "su" to become the root user. (3) Type "fdisk -l" to check the hda and hde structures if needed (Recommended so that you know what you are doing). (4) Type "cfdisk /dev/hda" to write down the exact size of hda1, assumed NTFS type. (5) Type "cfdisk /dev/hde" and create a primary hde1 partition, select file type NTFS (type No 7) and size identical to hda1, select it to be it bootable too, let it write the partition table and exit, (6) Native copying by typing "dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hde1 bs=32256". The 32256 is the track size for 63 sectors each 512 byte. Progress is slower if bs is omitted and Linux would use the default block size 512. (7) When dd operation completes it will show the time taken on the screen. Power down, remove Knoppix, remove the source disk hda. (re-set the new disk as the master, no action is needed if it is in cable select mode) (8) Boot system up with a DOS floppy (with fdisk.exe inside) to restore MBR by typing "fdisk /mbr". This works even on a SATA disk. (9) Remove DOS floppy and the SATA should be bootable with XP cloned. Did this twice with a XP home and then a XP Pro. The above example has XP Pro in a 28.6Gb partition with 16.1 filled data. It took 4297 second or 72 minutes. On another 10.1Gb partition with XP home in 5.24 Gb data the time was 1409 seconds or 24 minutes. Naturally the two different licenses of XP booted successfully. If the Linux has been installed from a hard disk and has the 2.6 kernel the time needed can be reduced considerably (about 50%).