transfering linux system to another hard drive

[Geoff Shang]

On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, Cheryl Homiak wrote:

> My hard drive with linux is failing; I have just obtained a 20gig drive
> which will have both my dos and linux on it. All drives--my dying linux
> drive, my old and tiny dos drive, and my new drive--are all connected to
> the computer. I will have to partition the hard drive, but it is being
> recognized correctly in the bios and linux. Eventually, the dying drive

Ah good, at least you won't need a bios upgrade.  I recently got a 30gb
drive and had to upgrade the bios in order that windows would see all of
it.  I don't know if DOS needs the DOS partition to be first or anything, I
don't know what DOS's limitations are.

> (hda) will be removed as will the dos drive (hdd) and the new drive (hdb)
> will become hda.  I want to know if there is a way to transfer my linux
> from the dying 2.5gig drive to the new 20gig; I am assuming I will first
> need to partition the hard drive and the partitioning will probably be
> somewhat different from the old drive due to the difference in size.

Yeah.  You first need to partition your new drive.  then you will need to
initialise (i.e. format) each partition.  Keep in mind how you're going to
use these.  then you can probably follow greg's instructions (i.e. mounting
the new drive under /mnt and shifting stuff across).  Remember to mount all
your linux partitions so that stuff ends up in its right partition (i.e. if
you want a seperate /usr or /var partition then make these dirs then mount
accordingly).   Here's an example.  You have a root partition, a home
partition and a usr partition.  These are /dev/hdb1, /dev/hdb3 and
/dev/hdb4, for argument's sake.  You'd need to do:

mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt
mkdir /mnt/home
mount /dev/hdb3 /mnt/home
mkdir /mnt/usr
mount /dev/hdb4 /mnt/usr

Hope this makes sense.

> Also, can I make my partition that will hold dos with linux since I have
> no data already onthe hard drive to protect?

urrr.  If you mean, can you use linux to make your dos partition, then I
think the answer is yes.  That is to say, yes, but I'm not sure what you'd
use to format it.

Geoff.