easiest way to replace hard drive?

[jonr at destar.net]

Quoting "Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak" <mjc at avtechpulse.com>:

> Hi all,
>
> Is there an easy way to transfer a system from one drive (holding  
> boot, swap, lvm partitions, in the default F11 layout) to a  
> different hard drive, if the new drive is smaller?
>
> If the new drive is larger, dd could be used in a fairly straightforward way.
>
> However, I want to try replacing a 160 GB hard drive with an Intel  
> 80 GB solid-state drive, just for fun...
>
> I suspect a re-install might be easier.
>
> - Mike

I would think you would need to do a lvreduce and possibly a vgreduce  
to get the data portion of the drive under 80GB. From there I think a  
'dd' would work just fine.

Part-image, as someone else suggested, is also a good choice. It only  
copies the data portions of the drive leaving the free blocks alone.  
So it only copies those blocks that have data.

Jon