> The dd command will make an exact copy of the input disk onto the > output disk regardless of the number of partitions, it copies boot > loaders and hidden partitions. it makes a bit-exact copy of the input > hard disk, which is why I use it when I perform an upgrade, replace the > gronked disk with the backup disk, boot and go. > About the only caveat is that the output disk needs to be *no smaller* > than the input disk. That is exactly right, which is why I said it is great for Windows backups and NOT dealing with the bootlaoder, and also that one needs to be careful with fragmentation. Perhaps what I should have made more clear is that any Linux user who can read manual pages and howtos can take care of boot-loaders easily on their own in a transfered installation. And the key aspect here is that the bootloader needs to know the exact location of the kernel on the disk from whcih it is booting; installing LILO or GRUB does just that. Really, there are limitless possibilities of how one can boot a Linux system. A combination of GRUB/LILO and also PXE (network booting) with RD (ramdisks) can take one very far. This is how admins of large centralized installations like to do things. In a nutshell, they have pre-prepared images that are essentially dropped on fresh disks. Those images are stored on network drives that are exported. The target hardware is setup by booting as a "thin client" from a networked bootpd-serving server, partitioning, dropping an image or tarball, and installing a bootloader. I am guessing there are several webpages with instructions on doing this. But my favourite part is yanking an image of a hybernated Windows machine, changing the drive with new hardware, and rebooting the new harware from hybernation. Done that with Windows XP. What would Windows do without Linux...