[PLUG] replacing the system Hard drive

[Ian Burrell]

Josh Orchard wrote:
> 
> I have two HD in the sysem.  One is for the OS and some other minor
> things and the other is mostly home dirs and files.
> 

Having two drives does make things easier because you can leave the 
second drive alone.

> I think the system drive is going bad and want to do a complete move
> from the old HD of 30GB to a new HD of 120GB.  Beside attaining a copy
> of Ghost what alternatives do I have?  I know I'll have to take the
> computer off line and boot from a floppy to move the drive but not
> sure how to do it.
> 

You might want to consider doing a fresh install on the new drive.

> My first guess is to use dd but not familiar with that well enough to
> know if that is the best tool for the job.
> 

dd only works if the filesystems are exactly the same.  I have found 
that "cp -a" works fine.  There is also a piped tar command that people 
use to copy files.

> Suggestions?  I want to be able to take the computer offline for a
> short time.  Mount the other HD.  Reboot on a floopy, run a command to
> move the contents from the old drive to the new.  Take out the old
> drive and boot up with the new drive.  The Old OS and all files should
> still be there.  hmm,  Will there be partition problems?  Or just
> extra space I can repartition later?
> 

The way I would do it is:

1. Backup system files onto second hard drive.  /etc, list of packages, 
/root

2. Put in the new hard drive.  Boot to old drive or floppy.

3. Partition new drive.  Copy files from old drive to new drive.

4. Swap old drive and new drive and maybe remove old drive.  Boot to new 
drive.

  - Ian

-- 
ian at znark.com
http://www.znark.com/