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#1 2005-11-26 04:17:45
- Bysshe
- Member
- Registered: 2004-12-10
- Posts: 271
About moving an installed system to another drive.
In the future, I intend to move my install from my very small 9.2gb disk, to a considerably larger one (freshly formatted disk). What is the best way to do this? I know there's some way to back up files, but I have a hard time finding this...anyway, I'm just clueless as to what I would do to accomplish any of this. And what if, just what if I tried to move this from the current ext3 to a Reiser 4?
Question: Best way to transfer whole system to another drive. Also, what was that command for backing up the system I know I've seen before, but have a hard time finding every time I think about it.
Thanks alot!
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#2 2005-11-26 09:38:31
- mctavish
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- From: Australia
- Registered: 2004-03-22
- Posts: 48
Re: About moving an installed system to another drive.
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#3 2005-11-26 11:23:42
- T-Dawg
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- From: Charlotte, NC
- Registered: 2005-01-29
- Posts: 2,736
Re: About moving an installed system to another drive.
use the tar method rather than cp -a in the link above.
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#4 2005-11-26 15:05:23
- sash
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- Registered: 2005-10-16
- Posts: 155
Re: About moving an installed system to another drive.
use the tar method rather than cp -a in the link above.
Why? I am asking without being provokative. I've used 'cp -a' for many years for this purpose without a single problem. I've used tar as well, but to archive an existing system install.
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#5 2005-11-26 20:00:09
- T-Dawg
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- From: Charlotte, NC
- Registered: 2005-01-29
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Re: About moving an installed system to another drive.
Because you have to worry about preserving symlinks, permissions, etc. Tar does all this for you and personally, I've had better luck with it in this regard.
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#6 2005-11-26 20:32:58
- Dusty
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- From: Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
- Registered: 2004-01-18
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Re: About moving an installed system to another drive.
Ah, but cp -a does preserve all that, that's what the -a does. A problem with the tar method is you have to touch everything twice -- first to create the archive from the source, second to untar it to the destination. The cp method goes straight from source to destination.
Having said that, I usually use tar because it feels safer too.
Dusty
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#7 2005-11-26 20:47:55
- T-Dawg
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- From: Charlotte, NC
- Registered: 2005-01-29
- Posts: 2,736
Re: About moving an installed system to another drive.
Having said that, I usually use tar because it feels safer too.
Dusty
yeah -I recall your cp adventures without the proper switches that left you without preserved permissions and the ability to su...
Scary aren't I? 
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#8 2005-11-27 21:07:18
- Bysshe
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- Registered: 2004-12-10
- Posts: 271
Re: About moving an installed system to another drive.
cool, thanks, guys.
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#9 2005-11-28 19:42:02
- lanrat
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- From: Poland
- Registered: 2003-10-28
- Posts: 1,274
Re: About moving an installed system to another drive.
Using tar vs using cp. There is some info in the forums you just have to dig a few months back. Also google will spit a lot of links if you ask it gently ;-)
Previous versions of the Mini How-To stated that you could also use tar to copy the disk, but this method was found to have a bug.
I have no idea it this is still true but I'm always using cp to move data from one disk to another. Just don't copy /dev, /proc and /sys - they should be recreated and use verbose option with cp.
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