Copying DCP best practice QUESTION

[Terraform]

Hey there,
I have a battle tested DCP which has projected successfully at over a dozen festivals and now I need a another copy.
I was wondering what the best practices are for doing this... My assumption is that IF the exact same drive is properly formatted it should be as simple as transferring (or cloning) the entirety of the working DCP onto the new drive... right?

I should also point out that I am on a Mac and I plan on asking a computer solutions company in my neighborhood to do the formatting and cloning in his PC environment...

I am open to any tips, instructions or advice to ensure that this process goes smoothly.

Thanks!

[Carsten]

Cloning will work, although, since you need to use special software and learn how to use it, it may pose new pitfalls.
In general, a simple file copy using Explorer or Mac Finder should be sufficient and easy to do. However, if that drive is ext2/ext3 formatted, you may run into problems creating a new ext2/ext3 drive.

How did you create the original disc?

- Carsten

[Terraform]

The original disc was authored by a freelancer in my town (and again has been working flawlessly for over a year)

I plan on taking an the exact type of physical drive (Toshiba) to another guy I have used who does computer/IT work in my neighborhood and ask him to clone the working disc onto my "new" disc and ensure that the two drives are formated in the same ex2/ex3 manner that the original working one is.

So I guess my questions is this:
is there any tips / tools / info that would be helpful when cloning the drive in a PC (non mac) environment?
ie suggested applications or methods.

[Carsten]

If that PC guy isn't able to answer these questions, you should not let him do the job

Clonezilla is a free cloning application. In general, cloning is OS-transparent, so, the disc formatting doesn't matter. The partition format is also duplicated from the original, so a format to ext2/ext3 is not even necessary beforehand. I think Acronis TrueImage is a popular windows tool for cloning, though I have never used it for that specific task before. Typically, after cloning, performing a verify is a good idea. All commercial mass duplicators perform cloning, not file copies, since it is much faster.



- Carsten

[Terraform]

If that PC guy isn't able to answer these questions, you should not let him do the job

Ha! I haven't asked him yet... I wanted to go in with all the answers before hand
this speaks more to my fear of what I don't know about PC's than anything...
So from what I can understand from your answer that cloning a drive works and there really isn't anything special to know or any tricks, but like always always verify and check data first...

Great! thanks again!

[Carsten]

It's a good idea to either have a windows ext-drive reader or a boot-linux in order to check the drive created. That would be the most basic check. With a Windows (or Mac) ext2/ext3 driver, you could even mount this drive and try to play the DCP using DCP-o-matic DCP player. That's not a full formal validation, but chances are high that you won't have any issues with that drive.

Even better would be if that PC guy was Linux-savvy.


- Carsten

[Terraform]

Thanks you Carsten!
Very much appreciated..
Cheers
Shawn