[Liverpool] Migrating hard disks

[Andrew Williams]

2009/1/19 Adrian McEwen <adrian at mcqn.net>:
> Morning all,
>
> A quick (I hope) techie question...
>
> My CentOS-based server has been running low on disk space, so I've bought a
> shiny new 0.5TB drive for it.  Rather than graft the new drive onto the
> existing filesystem (because I want to keep the install nice and simple and
> the e-smith distro is happiest with a single drive) I want to move
> everything from the existing drive onto the new one.
>
> What's the easiest and quickest way to copy everything from the old drive to
> the new one?
>
> I'm thinking of booting from a Knoppix CD with both drives connected up and
> then using "dd" to copy the contents of the old drive onto the new.  Is that
> sensible?  Anything I need to worry about other than the partition table?
>
> The partition layout is  [boot partition | swap partition | everything else
> partition] and it's the "everything else" partition that will be larger, so
> I'm assuming that will all work okay?

Best thing to do is to replicate the parition setup on the new drive,
so same size boot, same size swap and the larger other drive.

Then, boot Knoppix and mount the existing and new partions side by
side, so for example /mnt/boot-old and /mnt/boot-new. Then use rsync
between the drives, this will ensure that you get a 1:1 copy.

After doing the two partitions, remember to disable the old drive,
boot Knoppix and re-install grub on the new drive, once that is done
you should be able to reboot and start up. Remember, keep the old
drive available for a few days to make sure that backup is 1:1 :)

-- 
Andrew Williams / Nik_Doof
w: http://tensixtyone.com/
e: andy at tensixtyone.com