Which of the following commands will accomplish this task?

A systems administrator needs to clone the partition /dev/sdc1 to /dev/sdd1.

Which of the following commands will accomplish this task?
A . tar -cvzf /dev/sdd1 /dev/sdc1
B . rsync /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1
C . dd if=/dev/sdc1 of=/dev/sdd1
D . scp /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1

View Answer

Answer: C

Explanation:

The command dd if=/dev/sdc1 of=/dev/sdd1 copies the data from the input file (if) /dev/sdc1 to the output file (of) /dev/sdd1, byte by byte. This is the correct way to clone a partition. The other options are incorrect because they either compress the data (tar -cvzf), synchronize the files (rsync), or copy the files over a network (scp), which are not the same as cloning a partition.

References: CompTIA Linux+ (XK0-005) Certification Study Guide, Chapter 10: Managing Storage, page 321.