dd and cp -a

[Ian Malone]

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.)

-- 
imalone