RE: Duplicating a disk

Thanks for the info. This is very nicely detailed.

I am using IDE drives but will most likely do as suggested and copy a
partition at a time.

I cannot try it just yet because I can't afford any downtime for a couple of
weeks yet but plan on doing so soon.

Thanks again.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of jdow
> Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2003 7:19 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Duplicating a disk
>
>
> Um, it sounds like you don't want to duplicate a disk so much as
> migrate to
> a new, larger disk. I'll presume this is the situation, otherwise a simple
> "dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb" when booted from the install CDROM would
> suffice to create an exact duplicate, regardless of OSs involved, too.
> (Although I have, in the past, found it was safest to use several "dd"
> sessions to copy disks, particularly SCSI disks. On many manufacturer's
> SCSI disks writing to more than one block at block zero is "fatal" You
> must low level format to recover. Fortunately "dd" has means of handling
> these needs. "man dd" is your friend in that case.)
>
> Suppose hda is your source disk with several partitions and hdb is your
> destination disk with a slightly different partitioning structure. Again,
> it is best to work from the install CDROM (or "telinit 1" mode) rather
> than on a live active system. I mount the source file structure one
> section at a time. And I do much the same for the destination file
> structure. Then as I mount say hda's /var to /1 and hdb's /var to /2
> I perform a "cp -a /1 /2", sit back, and relax. Then I dismount /var
> on both drives and work on say /home. I found it easiest to keep track
> of what I am doing if I work from the "inside out". That is to say if
> /usr/local/large is a separate partition I copy it first, then /usr/local
> if it has its own partition, and finally /usr. The last thing I copy is
> generally the two disk's root partitions. Of course, when copying the /
> structure it may pay to copy much of it individually with / still
> mounted as /. "cp -a /etc /1" to copy over the /etc contents, and so
> forth. Skipping /proc is probably a good thing. {^_-}
>
> The chief reason I work in this order is that my mind goes numb watching
> paint dry er partitions copy and its easier to remember what I am doing.
>
> Then before I swap the disks around and reboot I "cheat fate". I use
> a /2 mountpoint to mount the entire (former) /dev/hda file system
> in the newly created /dev/hdb's /etc/fstab structure using the NEW
> intended /dev/hda and /dev/hdb references, of course. Then I swap
> A and B on the cable (I use cable select on drives these days) and
> boot. Having the original present is a boon when you discover some
> critical file was not copied over for some silly reason.
>
> {^_^}
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Phil" <[email protected]>
>
> > Hi All,
> >   Does anybody know if it's possible and if so how difficult it is to
> > duplicate the hard drive? I want to switch over to a larger disk on my
> > system and I guess copy all my partitions from the 3 disks I
> have now onto
> > one bigger disk.
> >   I guess the hardest thing is to get the boot, root, var and tmp so the
> new
> > disk will bootup by itself and just copy the other partitions
> with the cp
> > command.
> >   It wouldn't hurt to have a backup disk either.
> >
> >   Another thing I was thinking was just installing RH 8 on the new disk
> and
> > mounting the 7.2 disk for archive purposes. Can I do that? HAving a RH8
> boot
> > disk and mount my 7.2 disks and just copy their data to the 8.0 disk?
> >
> >  Thanks in advance.
>
>
>
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