[geeks] Another IDE question -- making an exact drive copy

[Mark G. Thomas]

Hi,

I'm trying to make an exact duplicate of an IDE drive from a dedicated
voicemail machine.  The machine is a VoiceWorks, and appears to run it's
own custom OS.  I have several of the units, but one has a failed drive.
The original drive is 2.4GB.

By connecting the original drive and a replacement drive to a Linux machine,
I can use dd to make a sector by sector sequential copy of the drive, however
it appears to me that the VoiceWorks stores some program checksum somewhere,
that is failing to be copied, or includes something read from the drive but 
somehow not included in the "dd" copy in some checksum stored on the drive.

I can't imagine the drive geometry matters, since I am under the impression
these things are just treated as a sequential set of sectors by the controller.

Does anyone have any suggestions?  Obviously the replacement drive is
not exactly the same model as the original drive, though is of equal or
greater capacity.  Two different model replacement drives yield exactly 
the same error, with same CRC numbers.

If I use "dd" to read back the contents of my copied drive and the original,
I can use "cmp" to successfully validate that what was read from the original
matches what was read from my copy, but I know there is at least some 
drive identification information that is not being read and re-written,
since of course the new drive still identifies itself to the Linux machine
as the different model from the original.

Mark


Failed boot attempt from my copy of the drive:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
VoiceWorks 16 Loader - Version 2.08 - 7/24/98
Primary disk header has a valid CRC


   ------ Disk Configuration ------
Header: ->ESI - VoiceWorks 16<-
Disk Version: 2.3 4/29/1999
 (Type: 0x0009)
Heads: 15 - Tracks: 8876 - Sectors: 63
Bytes: 4294557696 - Clusters: 262119
Program # - Ver  Rev  SubRev -  CheckSum      CRC  Size
        1     1    2     2     0x02320F6C  0x6D53  507904
        2   Not Installed
        3   Not Installed
    Config: Start: 3072, Amt: 100
     Debug: Start: 3172, Amt: 186
     Alarm: Start: 3358, Amt: 10
SetupForRamAmt: 0 - CurrentProgram: 1 - StartupCount: 0
Looking for newest program
Loading VoiceWorks 16 program from location 1 (1)
Loading cluster 0Checking program CRC
Program CRC mis-match (cal: 0x2E8D - 0x6D53 - size 507904)

Executing program from location 1


VoiceWorks 16 Loader - Version 2.08 - 7/24/98
Primary disk header has a valid CRC
.... etc...



-- 
Mark G. Thomas (Mark at Misty.com)
http://www.misty.com/  http://mail-cleaner.com/