[rescue] Unix block device names to select entire drive

[Nigel Williams]

On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 3:04 PM, Cody Swanson <mailinglists at sysop.ca> wrote:
> When I clone a solaris disk I just dd slice 2 (the backup slice).
> This clones the whole disk.

Regarding Cody's comment it would seem to be useful to develop a
cheat-sheet which listed for various operating systems which device
name corresponds to the entire drive.

For NeXTStep 3.3 the slice "h" provides access to the entire drive
including what is described as the drive "front-porch" [*]

dd if=/dev/rsd1h of=ImageOfEntireDisk

[*] From http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1711&sid=ca20ef8455d6264a55c19f03580be170:

The "front porch" is a number of sectors at the start of the disk that
precedes the actual UFS file system layout. This "front porch" is
commonly used on BSD-style disk layouts, but I think has become
unnecessary with the advent of PC-based MBR-style slicing of the disk.

"In the NEXTSTEP m68k/i386 CD, the front porch contained four copies
of the disk label, and two identical copies of the boot program. The
first copy of the disk label is at sector 0, and this is apparently
what the m68k ROM reads for the pointers to locate the boot program. "