[Gllug] dd'ing a nearly empty disk to a SMALLER disk - is it possible?

[Alistair Mann]

Richard Jones wrote:
>  On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 06:28:59PM +0000, Malcolm Blackmore wrote:
> > I need to transfer the contents of a nearly empty windows/linux
> > partitioned 500gb disk to a 320gb disk mirroring the
> > windows-root-home structure. There is less than 150gb actual
> > content on this 500gb disk. This is to transfer the windows XP
> > which there are no disks to reinstall the pre-installed XP that was
> > on the original 40gb disk of the fujitsu - which was replaced with
> > a larger disk. That was no problem, of course. But I bought 4x of
> > these P4 computers for 50 quid the lot and now one of the disks in
> > one of them has died and I have 3 spare 320gb sata disks to use.
> >
> > Is this possible? How can I get the partitions and their contents,
> > especially the XP which is vital to my 13 year old daughters SIMS
> > playing(!) and a printer driver which is no longer available on the
> > web for the linux root partitions.
>
>  This is not trivial.  The way to do it would start with a boot CD
>  which has gparted and ntfsresize on it.  ntfsresize can shrink the
>  data and gparted can move the partition tables accordingly.

This has been very easy when I've done it, but I would certainly 
recommend practice on an old drive beforehand because of the confidence 
factor; I've used gparted's CD probably two dozen times without problem.

>  Unfortunately the chance that you'll end up with a bootable Windows
>  machine is fairly low, since Windows doesn't appear to like having
>  its boot partition moved about (boot == C:\ for XP).  The chance that
>  you'll completely destroy the data by fat-fingering something or
>  just through not knowing the deep intricacies is quite high too.

Vista and 7 both have reasonable and reliable tools for repartitioning 
drives; OP could also temporarily attach the drive to such a machine for 
that purpose to get it down to 300Gb and /then/ do the DD, should 
gparted be to scary.

Finally, XP has known ways to transfer their wretched licensing from one 
installation to the next; it's necessary only that a new Windows 
installation media matches the OEM media originally used -- 
Fujitsu/Siemens in this case. Such media is often sold at computer shows 
(or Queensway all week round for those in London)
License transfer: 
http://netsecurity.about.com/od/windowsxp/qt/aaqtwinxp0829.htm

Cheers,
-- 
Alistair Mann


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