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From: Greg Heilers on 6 Mar 2010 18:03
I would like to copy my existing set-up to a new and larger hard drive.
Basically, I want to keep my existing partition configuration - but
copy them all to larger partitions on a new drive. What is the easiest
and most fool-proof way of doing this - preferably command-line, but
GUI if need be?

Thanks.
From: Mike Jones on 6 Mar 2010 20:01
Responding to Greg Heilers:

> I would like to copy my existing set-up to a new and larger hard drive.
> Basically, I want to keep my existing partition configuration - but copy
> them all to larger partitions on a new drive. What is the easiest and
> most fool-proof way of doing this - preferably command-line, but GUI if
> need be?
>
> Thanks.


1: Create new partitions+fs on new HDD and mount them.

2: cp -aux /mnt/old /mnt/new (for each partition /except/ the running OS!)

3: !!! Boot from alternate OS to cp HDD OS partition !!!

4: Tweak new partition OS accordingly (/etc/fstab etc.)

5: Switch new HDD to old HDD (if required\tweaked) location and boot it.


You could do the whole thing from a live\alternate OS of course.

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From: Henrik Carlqvist on 6 Mar 2010 20:05
Greg Heilers <gheilersNOSPAM(a)NOSPAMearthlink.net> wrote:
> What is the easiest and most fool-proof way of doing this - preferably
> command-line, but GUI if need be?

See /usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs/Hard-Disk-Upgrade for a good start

regards Henrik
--
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root(a)localhost postmaster(a)localhost

From: GangGreene on 6 Mar 2010 22:33
Greg Heilers wrote:

> I would like to copy my existing set-up to a new and larger hard drive.
> Basically, I want to keep my existing partition configuration - but
> copy them all to larger partitions on a new drive. What is the easiest
> and most fool-proof way of doing this - preferably command-line, but
> GUI if need be?
>
> Thanks.

rsync
From: Douglas Mayne on 6 Mar 2010 23:38
On Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:03:55 -0600, Greg Heilers wrote:

> I would like to copy my existing set-up to a new and larger hard drive.
> Basically, I want to keep my existing partition configuration - but copy
> them all to larger partitions on a new drive. What is the easiest and
> most fool-proof way of doing this - preferably command-line, but GUI if
> need be?
>
> Thanks.
>
Foolproof is a tall order. Success is more likely if the user understands
what he is trying to do, and understands some of the pitfalls. As already
recommended, the Hard Disk Upgrade Mini Howto is a good start, although
it is a bit dated at this point. A more modern approach uses a live cd or
another rescue environment to create the partition table(s), the new
partition images, and to perform various fixups: the bootloader, /etc/
fstab, /boot/initrd, etc. The live cd allows that all files will be
closed and the filesystem should be in a consistent state for copying.

With some experience, it is possible to use some more fancy tricks which
are dependant on the filesystems in use. For example, a nice feature of
xfs is that it can be directly "cloned" into place on a new volume. Once
cloned (say, with the dd command), it can be resized to fill its new
target volume using an xfs_growfs command. Cloning has the advantage that
"exteneded attributes" and "access control lists" will be automatically
moved also. The specific tricks that can be used are dependant on which
filesystems you are using. In any case, don't under-estimate this basic
command sequence:

# SOURCE=/mnt/sda1
# DEST=/mnt/sdb1
# (cd $SOURCE && tar -cpf - .)| (cd $DEST && tar -xvf -)

Other common tricks employ two systems and a network transport, such as,
the netcat command, nc, to transfer the old system to the new target disk.

BTW, here is one final caveat, which is going to be more prevalent in the
future. Be sure to watch out for new disk drives which use a 4096 sector
size, instead of a 512 bytes, as was discussed on recent thread on this
newsgroup. I believe this design requires all disk partitions to start on
a LBA block number evenly divisible by 8; otherwise, there is a serious
performance penalty. Personally, I haven't used any of the "advanced
format" drives, yet, but they are expected to be "the standard" very soon.

--
Douglas Mayne
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