I have a piece of equipment that has a motherboard in it which boots to a linux based operating system.  I am interested in being able to clone this one hard drive so that in the case it fails i have a backup plan to keep the equipment working.  So far I have been able to mount the hard disk to a different PC running linux, and was able to tar the data off the partitions.  However I don't know what to make of two of the partitions- sdb2 and sdb13 which do not show up as EXT3 file systems; sdb2 is 0x05 extended, and while sdb13 is 0x83 it does not show it has any file system and I cannot mount it.And I am not sure yet how to handle GRUB if I use a new hard drive of a different size.  I'm looking to find out if what I want to do is even possible... if i have enough information from the followingoutput from fdisk -lDisk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectorsUnits = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytesSector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytesI/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytesDisk identifier: 0x00066c45   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System/dev/sdb1              63      208844      104391   83  LinuxPartition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary./dev/sdb2          208845    31262489    15526822+   5  ExtendedPartition 2 does not start on physical sector boundary./dev/sdb5          208908     6650909     3221001   83  LinuxPartition 5 does not start on physical sector boundary./dev/sdb6         6650973     7052534      200781   83  LinuxPartition 6 does not start on physical sector boundary./dev/sdb7         7052598     7646939      297171   83  LinuxPartition 7 does not start on physical sector boundary./dev/sdb8         7647003     7855784      104391   83  LinuxPartition 8 does not start on physical sector boundary./dev/sdb9         7855848    15679439     3911796   83  Linux/dev/sdb10       15679503    23503094     3911796   83  LinuxPartition 10 does not start on physical sector boundary./dev/sdb11       23503158    24097499      297171   83  LinuxPartition 11 does not start on physical sector boundary./dev/sdb12       24097563    24691904      297171   83  LinuxPartition 12 does not start on physical sector boundary./dev/sdb13       24691968    31262489     3285261   83  Linuxoutput from sfdisk -d# partition table of /dev/sdbunit: sectors/dev/sdb1 : start=       63, size=   208782, Id=83/dev/sdb2 : start=   208845, size= 31053645, Id= 5/dev/sdb3 : start=        0, size=        0, Id= 0/dev/sdb4 : start=        0, size=        0, Id= 0/dev/sdb5 : start=   208908, size=  6442002, Id=83/dev/sdb6 : start=  6650973, size=   401562, Id=83/dev/sdb7 : start=  7052598, size=   594342, Id=83/dev/sdb8 : start=  7647003, size=   208782, Id=83/dev/sdb9 : start=  7855848, size=  7823592, Id=83/dev/sdb10: start= 15679503, size=  7823592, Id=83/dev/sdb11: start= 23503158, size=   594342, Id=83/dev/sdb12: start= 24097563, size=   594342, Id=83/dev/sdb13: start= 24691968, size=  6570522, Id=83I was able to mount the EXT3 file systems of sdb 1, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and save the contents of each to sdb1.tar, sdb5.tar, and so on.I have also done dd if=/dev/sdb of=./sdb_dd bs=512 count=1 to save the MBR of the drive to a file called sdb_dd.
understanding this DOS partition table and cloning to a new drive
partition;mbr