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Re: [LUG] Copying partitions to new (larger) HDD

 

On Wed, 2007-12-12 at 08:11 +0000, Neil Stone wrote:
> Simon Williams wrote:
> > Rob Beard wrote:
> >> I'd boot off a Live CD (Knoppix, Ubuntu etc) and then partition your new 
> >> drive how you want it.  Then mount the old partitions and the new 
> >> partitions and copy everything over as Neil suggested.
> > 
> > I would just be using cp -a: that's what I used when I changed laptop, 
> > but that required a reinstall of windows anyway. I'm trying to do it 
> > without disturbing winxp. I'm not really expecting cp -a to work here, 
> > though I could be wrong. Perhaps the main reason for this is that NTFS 
> > write support is very new and hasn't implemented all the special 
> > functions yet. I really would rather use dd. I'm surprised no-one has 
> > written a tool to do this easily.
> > 
> >> You'd also have to install a boot loader (Grub for instance) which might 
> >> be just a case of running grub-install hd0 and updating your fstab (if 
> >> it uses UID's or volume labels instead of just plain hold /dev/sda1, 2, 
> >> 3 etc...).
> > 
> > Reinstalling the bootloader is expected and not a problem.
> > 
> >> Make sure you copy and not move too, that way if things screw up you can 
> >> go back to the smaller drive (and just a thought, is the plain old IDE 
> >> drive /dev/sdb or /dev/hdb?)
> > 
> > Of course (but thanks anyway- I have been known to do very stupid things).
> > 
> 
> you can use dd and gparted to work the magic... I recall seeing a linux 
> "rescue" disk around on the internet, but I can't recall exactly where.. 
> it had things like, fdisk, dd and gparted on it..

If you know what you're doing then there's no reason why you can't
simply dd the lot over and then use a special* tool to "rediscover" the
true location of the partitions, including any unused space.

The disc you're referring to could be one of many.  My personal
favourite (when I don't have access to my laptop and a USB->PATA
adapter) is Penguin Sleuth Kit's CD.

* something like "gpart" or "testdisk"

Grant. :)


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