[ILUG] New Hard Disc

[Paul Jakma]

On Fri, 21 Jun 2002, Padraig Brady wrote:

> Hmm, how about:
> 1. dd bs=32k if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb

dont do this. the partition table is intricately linked to the CHS
interpration method the BIOS uses for that disk. Different size disks
will have different methods applied to them, even CHS for the the
exact same disks are sometimes not interpreted the same way by
different BIOSes.

what i'd recc'd is: create a /new/ partition table on the new disk 
with each partition equal in size (or bigger - but then you waste 
space) to the partitions on the old disk.

then dd on a partition by partition basis.

trust me - i learnt this the hard way. 

(and ended up trying vmware, bochs and whatever various disks and PCs
that i and a colleague could find in order to try get dd'ed raw disk
images back on to disk and bootable - sheer hell. i think eventually
my colleague got the data out by installing NT under VMWare, the
images as a second and third disk and using a hexeditor on the images
in order to persuade NT to read them - the images were of an NT
stripe set - hell.)

> 2. reboot with new disk and use ext2resize to extend
>     your 1 partition to fill the disk (shouldn't affect
>     lilo I think?).
> 
> Padraig.

the other way is:

1. create new partitions on new disk.

2. mount them under /mnt, eg /mnt/new/, /mnt/new/usr/, /mnt/new/var, 
/mnt/new/home, enz..

for H in / /usr /var /home <etc..>; do 
	( cd ${H} ; tar -clf - . ) | ( cd /mnt/new${H} ; tar -xspf - )
done

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	paul at clubi.ie	paul at jakma.org	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
		-- Woody Allen, "Annie Hall"