[TriLUG] upgrading to a bigger HD

[Steve Hoffman]

Someone else can probably correct me if I'm wrong, but your partition
information and MBR is stored in that small slice called /dev/hda (I
believe it's that unusable 8mb you always lose when trying for format
a disk)  and the partitions are /dev/hda1,2,3,...  So when you clone
disk A (of 1GB) to disk B (of 2GB) you'll have 1GB of free space on
the new drive...just inaccessible.  dd will copy from sector 1 to 1000
and burn to the new disk...not caring if there's more space
available..once it hits the end of disk A and never got an error
burning to disk B..you're done.  A mirror (bootable) image of the
first.

Since you're gonna use Knoppix to do this, I'd look at QTParted once
you're in.  I've used that to shrink and grow partitions with ne'er a
failure...knock on wood.


On 6/9/05, Christopher L Merrill <chris at webperformanceinc.com> wrote:
> Ed Hill wrote:
> > Yes!  I've used dd and netcat to backup partitions and a neat little
> > tutorial is available at:
> >
> >   http://www.rajeevnet.com/hacks_hints/os_clone/os_cloning.html
> 
> Thanks for that link (and thanks to all the others, too).
> 
> I'm burning a Knoppix disk and will try to use dd to copy the
> drive as instructed in the tutorial.
> 
> A few more questions...
> If I scanned the tutorial correctly, this will create an exact copy
> of my original HDD onto my new one...including identical partition
> sizes. It will handle the MBR, too, right?
>    dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb
> 
> So if the new HDD is bigger and I want to increase my partition
> sizes, I'll need to resize the partitions before or after.  I don't
> think my old copy of PQMagic will work on this drive.
> The tutorial demostrates copying one partition at a time and says:
> 
>   "Note: Both drives are partitioned exactly same. If you have different
>    brand harddrives, make sure each partition on  second drive must be equal
>    to or greater than first drive partitions. Also make sure File system ID
>    should match for second drive also"
> 
> What it does _not_ tell me is: If I make the new partitions significantly
> larger and then copy in a smaller partition, will the extra space be
> useable by the filesystem?  Or is that space lost?
> 
> TIA,
> C
> 
> 
> --
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Chris Merrill                  |  http://www.webperformanceinc.com
> Web Performance Inc.
> 
> Website Load Testing and Stress Testing Software
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