Another successful drive migration ...

dhave · 2008-04-21 22:47:24

Every now and then something happens that makes me realize all over again how easy it is to work with Linux as compared with Windows. I had to move my ArchLinux installation from a 100Gb laptop drive to a new 160Gb drive. Doing this on Linux was nearly easier than copying a floppy drive in Windows.

I'm so glad to be free ....

TheBodziO · 2008-04-21 23:04:19

Kudos!

I was doing a similar migration recently too!

Misfit138 · 2008-04-22 03:05:04

I'm planning on doing this soon. What would you recommend I use to completely 'ghost' an 80 GB drive over to a 250GB?
dd ?
cp ?

dhave · 2008-04-22 19:58:44

I did this:

(1) installed the second hard drive and then booted with a SysRescue live cd.
(2) used gparted to create a partition structure on my new drive that was parallel that that on my old drive.
(3) for each of my three partitions (not counting swap) I created a new and an old /mnt directory, e.g., /mnt/OldBoot and /mnt/NewBoot, and mounted the corresponding new and old partitions accordingly.
(4) for /boot, I just used "cp -a /mnt/OldBoot/* /mnt/NewBoot".
(5) did the same for /home and /.
(6) went into /mnt/NewBoot and edited /boot/grub/menu.lst to reflect the changed drive designation (i.e., changed sda to sdb).
(7) went into /mnt/New/ and edited /etc/fstab to reflect the new drive and partition designations.
(8) exited and rebooted, this time from an ArchLinux installation CD (could have probably used SysRescue, but Arch was a little more convenient for this part).
(9) followed instructions from here to reinstall grub.

That did the trick. There are many ways to skin this particular cat, but this is the one I was most comfortable with, since it used commands and procedures that I was familiar with.

Last edited by dhave (2008-04-22 22:46:01)

elgatofelix · 2008-04-22 20:43:40

Haha nice.. i was about post something similar last weekend i migrated system to a faster disk without running installer
and it was a epic battle against the lack of space (NO BACKUPS hehe) but kind of fun at the same time... It took 1 hour to migrate whole system and the second day i've modified all my scripts to the new disk layout

EDIT: Weel to be honest it took 2 hours and the next day i was so sleepy at work ...

Last edited by elgatofelix (2008-04-22 20:45:25)

Misfit138 · 2008-04-22 22:28:35

dhave wrote:

I did this:
(1) installed the second hard drive and then booted with a SysRescue live cd.
(2) used gparted to create a partition structure on my new drive that was parallel that that on my old drive.
(3) for each of my three partitions (not counting swap) I created a new and an old /mnt directory, e.g., /mnt/OldBoot and /mnt/NewBoot.
(4) for /boot, I just used "cp -a /mnt/OldBoot/* /mnt/NewBoot".
(5) did the same for /home and /.
(6) went into /mnt/NewBoot and edited /boot/grub/menu.lst to reflect the changed drive designation (i.e., changed sda to sdb).
(7) went into /mnt/New/ and edited /etc/fstab to reflect the new drive and partition designations.
(8) exited and rebooted, this time from an ArchLinux installation CD (could have probably used SysRescue, but Arch was a little more convenient for this part).
(9) followed instructions from here to reinstall grub.
That did the trick. There are many ways to skin this particular cat, but this is the one I was most comfortable with, since it used commands and procedures that I was familiar with.

This is the way I was planning on doing it, but I was sure that it was too simple of a solution to actually work!
cp -a to keep permissions in tact, and then just reinstall GRUB. Thanks, glad to see it worked for you.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-04-21 22:47:24

Another successful drive migration ...

#2 2008-04-21 23:04:19

Re: Another successful drive migration ...

#3 2008-04-22 03:05:04

Re: Another successful drive migration ...

#4 2008-04-22 19:58:44

Re: Another successful drive migration ...

#5 2008-04-22 20:43:40

Re: Another successful drive migration ...

#6 2008-04-22 22:28:35

Re: Another successful drive migration ...

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