dd backup restore

[shoelesshunter78]

I have gentoo installed on /dev/sda partitioned as in the handbook giving me sda1 2,3 and 4. I want to clone to an external drive then restore to anothe machine. here are the steps I plan to follow:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=4k

attach /dev/sdb to the new machine

boot from a live disc

dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sda

boot into the restored (cloned) environment.

are these steps correct? will my mbr and partition table transfer without added commands?
keep in mind the new machine will be starting with a blank unpartitioned, unformatted drive.

[xaviermiller]

Hello,

I would prefer tar or rsync, because dd copies the whole disk with its MBR, partition table... and white spaces.

It's better to partition the destination table, format the partitions, then copy with tar or rsync.
_________________
Kind regards,
Xavier Miller