New Hard Drive...

Superewza · 2011-05-14 12:21:50

Well i'm in the process of rebuilding my PC and changing a few things round (Motherboard, HDD, Cooling etc.) to make it quieter and squeeze a bit more performance from it. Thing is, i kind of want to change hard drives too, i recently installed Arch to a 36GB Raptor which is a nice drive that doesn't have to spin up much, but when it does it's noisy as... i have a 160GB WD PATA drive i was thinking about suspending to reduce noise, but i don't want to install Arch all over again - is there a way of cloning then expanding the partitions? Expanding i can do from a LiveCD with gParted, but cloning the drive? Would there be any problems with making it bootable/GRUB?

Thanks

siriusb · 2011-05-14 12:27:52

Just rsync your system (offline) with a livecd or sysrescd then reinstall grub and make sure your grub.cfg or menu.list or whatever you use has the correct device names.

stryder · 2011-05-14 13:27:30

I have cloned systems by just cp -a * to new partition, just as long as you are not cloning the system you booted in. Update fstab in the new partition to reflect the new uuid (or label, which is what I use), create a new entry in your original system's menu.lst to boot the new system. Boot into the new system using the fallback img and then run mkinitcpio to update the img in the new system. Then you just need to deal with grub if you wish.

siriusb · 2011-05-14 13:57:01

@stryder,
If there's no grub installed on the new hdd, he won't be able to boot whatever he does with menu.lst.

thayer · 2011-05-14 14:23:48

Clonezilla LiveUSB, an open source alternative to Symantec Ghost. Boot it, choose source drive (or partition), choose destination drive (or partition) and 10 minutes later you're done. It's so easy a monkey can use it.

tesjo · 2011-05-14 15:27:22

dd from a livedisk is another clone option.

stryder · 2011-05-14 16:32:18

@Siriusb, I imagine he could boot from the first, right? Doesn't really have to remove that before he sets up grub for his second. As I said, that's how I do it.

siriusb · 2011-05-14 17:10:13

@stryder, Yes, you are right of course. In my mind the second hdd was removed after relocation
However I think it is more simple to copy partition, chroot and reinstall grub in one session.

Anyway, I don't understand the fallback mode boot and mkinitcpio. Could you please shed some light on it for me?

shulamy · 2011-05-14 17:55:41

i used G4U.

ezik

Superewza · 2011-05-14 23:24:23

Thanks for all the help... after burning a Clonezilla disk a thought occurs. Say i wanted to run the SMP folding client, that would mean using a 64 bit OS, right? Well i (for no particular reason it seems) went for the i686 version. I'm pretty certain this would mean reinstalling anyway. Oh well, i guess my bandwidth limit can take the hit.

On a similar note - is it possible to add a long term bandwidth monitor to conky? One that counts total traffic and resets each month?

ebirtaid · 2011-05-15 02:13:23

With conky there is totalup and totaldown (http://conky.sourceforge.net/variables.html) but I don't know that those would work as they overflow at 4gb apparently. You could probably rig it up to display the output of vnstat, though, with some sed or awk to make it look nice.

stryder · 2011-05-15 05:36:01

@Siriusb: I often find that because the img is created for the previous installation, boot fails. But for me, the fallback img (kernel26-fallback.img, which detects everything afresh) always succeeds. Once booted in the new system I just need to run mkinitcpio again and I can then run the regular img. I can also set up grub if I wish then.

siriusb · 2011-05-15 16:59:32

@stryder, Thanks, useful piece of information.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-05-14 12:21:50

New Hard Drive...

#2 2011-05-14 12:27:52

Re: New Hard Drive...

#3 2011-05-14 13:27:30

Re: New Hard Drive...

#4 2011-05-14 13:57:01

Re: New Hard Drive...

#5 2011-05-14 14:23:48

Re: New Hard Drive...

#6 2011-05-14 15:27:22

Re: New Hard Drive...

#7 2011-05-14 16:32:18

Re: New Hard Drive...

#8 2011-05-14 17:10:13

Re: New Hard Drive...

#9 2011-05-14 17:55:41

Re: New Hard Drive...

#10 2011-05-14 23:24:23

Re: New Hard Drive...

#11 2011-05-15 02:13:23

Re: New Hard Drive...

#12 2011-05-15 05:36:01

Re: New Hard Drive...

#13 2011-05-15 16:59:32

Re: New Hard Drive...

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