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

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 31 October 2010 18:28, Malcolm Blackmore <mblackmore at oxlug.org> 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.
>

There are several options.
1) Resize the filesystems to be smaller than they are now using a
Linux resize tool.
   Then resize the partitions and then copy the partitions.
2) Use backup software like bacula to backup the windows software, and
then do a bare metal restore to the new HD.
    BMR is done by installing a base OS, and then overwriting this
with the restored backup.
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