dd and cp -a

[Ian Malone]

Karl Larsen wrote:
> Ian Malone wrote:
>> Karl Larsen wrote:
>>>    I have this computer on /dev/sda and the new hard drive is 
>>> /dev/sdb. This F7 is all in /dev/sda6 and I want to copy /dev/sda6 to 
>>> /dev/sdb5. I tried dd but it failed I think because /dev/sdb5 is 
>>> smaller 10 GB than  /dev/sda6 which is 30 GB. It ended with an error 
>>> message.
>>>
>>>    So back to cp -a but there is a hitch. I redid /sdb5 with another 
>>> ext3 file system and I can mount it to /mnt on this computer. So it 
>>> is easy to cp all from /dev/sda6 to /dev/sdb5 but, with a simple # cp 
>>> -a / /mnt it will do all that fine but then want to copy /mnt to the 
>>> new /dev/sdb5.
>>>
>>>    Does anyone know a secret that will work? I will read man cp again 
>>> :-)
>>>
>>
>> I'm not 100% clear what's missing here.  If /dev/sdb5 is
>> mounted as mount then copying the stuff to /mnt has copied
>> it to the file system on /dev/sdb5.  Remount it as / and
>> you're done surely?
>>
>> (Aside: I think 10GB might be a bit cramped for a Fedora
>> install if it's going to hold /home as well.)
>>
>    All that is true but the problem was the of= was smaller than the 
> if=. I just checked and dd has my entire F7 copied to the new hard 
> drive. I just had to make the partition a small bit bigger than this 
> one. It is there and perfect!
> 

Sorry, I meant in reference to 'cp -a'.  Bob Chiodini has pointed
out the -x option would be useful too.

> 
>    So dd works fine if the partition it is going to (if=) is at least a 
> bye larger.
> 

Typo for 'of='?  It should work if they're the same size (since the
same partition information will be appropriate).  That's the case in
which it will work best.  As others have said dd can move the fs to a
larger partition but you'll have to adjust the fs to match if you want
to make use of the full size.

-- 
imalone