Arch Linux

loudtiger

Member

Registered: 2009-01-08

Posts: 68

Upgrading disks and file systems

I just bought a 500gb disk today during the Black Friday sales and I was wondering about the best way to swap it over.

Right now, I have 3 partitions:
/
/boot
/home

Since my install is pretty ancient, I've been using ext3 in my /home directory and I'd like to switch it over to ext4 on my new install.

Should I format the new 500gb drive with ext4 on all 3 partitions, and then rsync the files over? I was originally going to use dd, but then I remembered wanting to switch to ext4.

x33a

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 4,587

Re: Upgrading disks and file systems

Firstly ext4 on boot wouldn't really be beneficial, as journal makes no difference on boot. go for ext2 on boot. Other than that cp or rsync should do the trick.

davenorth

Member

Registered: 2010-10-25

Posts: 16

Re: Upgrading disks and file systems

If your fstab has entries like /dev/sda1 you should be fine if you use the same disk layout. If they're uuid entries or based on the disk labels, it will be a bit trickier. Check your /etc/fstab and see what the layout looks like.