Migrating to a new disk

[Paul Johnson]

The problem in your plan is that the "master boot record" will not be
copied, and without that, your new disk won't go.

You can copy entire partitions in various ways.  I know people who say
cp with the ARCHIVE option turned on is good enough, but years ago I
learned an old cpio trick and it always has worked when I want to copy
file for file:

http://pj.freefaculty.org/cgi-bin/twiki/view.pl/Linuxtips/WebHome

Look 1/2 way down that page.

Actually, though, in your situation, here's what I would so.   Install
the new disk, and make a FRESH install of linux on it.  Recently, I've
decided I do not care to learn any more about LVM because I have no
need of it, so I just go  old school and specify partitions.  I would
specify 500meg for /boot, 3000meg for /, 1500meg for swap, and a big
chunk of the rest for /home.  After the install is done, then install
the old disk in the system, and simply copy from your old /home
partition to the new one.  But if you like LVM and can understand it,
then it would let you resize partitions more easily. I just find it
annoying, and other tools I like are incompatible with it.

Oh, one other idea is to use g4u (ghost 4 unix) to copy your entire
disk into a file, and then use that file to copy the whole disk onto
your new system.  Then resize partitions with parted.  Note, you need
to copy the entire disk to get the MBR. You can simply copy partitions
with g4u, that works fine.  Except for the MBR.

pj



On 11/26/06, Hadders <fedora at workingwithit.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>   I have an old 120GB hard disk, and a much newer, 320GB hard disk.
>
> I'd like to migrate my linux (FC5) setup to this newer disk, and also
> want to enlarge the partitions.
>
> This may seem naive but can I....
>
> i) Boot up using the FC5 linux rescue mode
> ii) Manually partition the new disk, using fdisk
> iii) Use e2label and set the labels to be the same on the new disk
> partitions as the old, what is the command to tell me the current labels?
> iii) Mount both the old and new disks partitions into temporary
> directories I create
> iv) Do a 'cp -Rv /old-part/* /new-part/' command? Will that get ALL
> files, including hidden dot files?
> v) Edit the new copies, fstab and alter the mount points accordingly,
> that aren't using labels?
>
> Any pointers will be appreciated.
>
> Thank You.
> Hadders
>
>
>
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-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas