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[BeckyJ]

http://www.engadget.com/2005/09/14/panasonics-pocket-sd-card-copier/

Did this product ever make it to market? I haven't found it on the web.

In the alternative, anyone know if there's anything like this available in hardware or software?

Might something like this work for copying/cloning XO SD cards, videos, data, ebooks, OSs, etc.?

[Nayantara]

Don't think so.
Alternative hardware? Sure, if you have $650+ lying around 
http://store.storageheaven.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=591

You are better off using a regular PC with a card reader and copying the contents of the source SD to the hard disk and copying it from there to another SD Card.

To backup an image (including disk format, partitions, fat, etc) you can:
On a linux pc you would use the dd command. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_(Unix)
On a Windoze PC use an equivalent freeware http://sourceforge.net/projects/windd
or something like this utility http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

[Gabey8]

I have had one of these for a few years.

http://www.amazon.com/Sitecom-Mobile-Copier-Reader-Writer/dp/B000W5H7MC

It runs on 3 AAA batteries, and can copy to or from any of the following:

a mini USB port
Two regular USB ports
a CF card slot
an SD/MMC card slot

It appears to be currently unavailable at Amazon.com, but if it's still being sold online (or has been replaced by a newer version), it shouldn't be too hard to track it or its successor down elsewhere..

[pkohn]

You are better off using a regular PC with a card reader and copying the contents of the source SD to the hard disk and copying it from there to another SD Card.

To backup an image (including disk format, partitions, fat, etc) you can:
On a linux pc you would use the dd command. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_(Unix)
On a Windoze PC use an equivalent freeware http://sourceforge.net/projects/windd
or something like this utility http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

I just tried both of the Windows utils above to try and copy my SD card with ubuntu 8.10 "to the hard disk" - but neither would do this satisfactorily.

WinDD will only copy an ext3 partition to another ext3 partition (presumably erasing the whole existing content of the partition).

Driveimage throws out an error message "cannot create volume information (NT, cluster size = 0)" whether I try to copy to NTFS or FAT32 partition. It doesn't recognise the ext3 partition on my machine.

http://www.olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=4053.364 is where I've been asking about copying SD cards using the cp command, and that thread also discusses using the tar method.

I'd love to find a quick easy way to make a backup of an ext3 SD card using Windows, but I don't think these two suggestions quite do the business.

[mavrothal]

I'd love to find a quick easy way to make a backup of an ext3 SD card using Windows, but I don't think these two suggestions quite do the business.

I never used winDD but if it is similar to dd you should be able to clone your card to an image in the PC HD so you may not need ext3 partitioning. Try something like

Code:

dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=/home/mine/Ubuntu.image bs=4096 conv=notrunc,noerror

adjusting for the proper paths in windows.
Of course you should be able to read ext3 partitions in windows using some free utility like Ext2IFS or a commercial program

[BeckyJ]

Is there a two slot SD card reader one could plug into an XO USB port that would allow cloning an SD card from slot A to slot B?

Is that possible?

[pkohn]

I'd love to find a quick easy way to make a backup of an ext3 SD card using Windows, but I don't think these two suggestions quite do the business.

I never used winDD but if it is similar to dd you should be able to clone your card to an image in the PC HD so you may not need ext3 partitioning. Try something like

Code:

dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=/home/mine/Ubuntu.image bs=4096 conv=notrunc,noerror

adjusting for the proper paths in windows.
Of course you should be able to read ext3 partitions in windows using some free utility like Ext2IFS or a commercial program

Thanks for the advice, Mavrothal. WinDD has a very basic GUI which will only allow a dump from one partition to another. And it will only allow dumping a full card to an empty one. Even then the copy proved to be unbootable

However I have found a simple Windows based solution that has enabled me to create a bootable copy of the SDHC card with Teapot's Ubuntu on it. It might be handy for other command line averse Linux novices!

The answer is to use Acronis TrueImage to copy one partition to another. I wasted a lot of time trying to get somewhere with Paragon Drive Backup, but the output wasn't bootable.

It's comforting to know that if one card fails for whatever reason I have an exact copy that I can stick into the XO and keep working, without necessarily having to go through all those commands. I know you Linux experts love using your terminals, but I do like a nice GUI. I never did like DOS much