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# 2-Cent Tips

### 2-cent Tip: Copying a partition

Kapil Hari Paranjape [kapil at imsc.res.in]

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 22:19:34 -0700

Hello,

Here is a way to copy a partition which is mounted without copying all the other partitions that are under it.

Let /patha be the mountpoint of the partition from which you want to copy (it could even be the root path /).

Let /dev/new be the device to which you want to copy the data.

    	mkdir /var/tmp/src
    	# The bind mount is the crucial thing!
    	mount --bind /patha /var/tmp/src
    	mkdir /var/tmp/target
    	mount /dev/new /var/tmp/target
    	cd /var/tmp/src
    	# I find this a neat way to copy all files
    	# and permissions
    	find . | cpio -pdum /var/tmp/target
    	umount /dev/new
    	umount /var/tmp/src
    	rmdir /var/tmp/{src,target}

And you are done! I hope the above commands are self-explanatory. If not, then I can explain further.

Kapil. --

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Published in Issue 137 of Linux Gazette, April 2007

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