Re: Transfering linux system to a new hard drive

[Rafael Skodlar <raffi@linwin.com>]

On Mon, Dec 03, 2001 at 05:03:43PM -0600, Cheryl Homiak wrote:
> I apologize if this has been on this list recently; I just looked
> through
> several months of archives and didn't see it, but I'm quite sure I saw it
> on one of my lists fairly recently.
> My problem is that my hard drive is failing and eventually it just isn't
> going to start up, so I am hurrying to replace it. The old hard drive is
> 2.5gig and the new hard drive will be much larger: 20gig. I don't have a
> backup medium, though I have been able to tar my home directory and place
> the tar package in my zipslack on my dos hard drive. However, we will also
> be removing the dos hard drive as it is old and apparently not compatible
> to be on the same ide with the newer hard drives, at least with my bios.
> The plan is to have a dos partition on the sme hard drive as linux, though
> if I could afford it I'd still rather have two separate hard drives.

That's very good idea since drives are very cheap these days.

> I have been leaving my machine on because of the risk that I may never be
> able to bring up my hard drive again if I turn it off' I've had to try and
> try to get it to spin and start several times. The person putting my hard
> drive in says there is some possibility he could put the new hard drive in

I strongly suggest you do not do that. You will do more damage to the 
system thatway than save from it. My suggestionis to use ZIP drive  to tar 
all your stuff. You can use tar with multivolume option so that it takes 
one cartridge after another until it's done.

tar cvMf /dev/zip /home/yourdir

I don't know what the device name for the zip is since I don't use those 
disks. Don't like them at all. I preffer LS-120 floppy drives which can 
read old floppy disks. Much better.

> with the machine on so that I could transfer from one hard drive to
> another, but we are concerned there could be dammage to my system or it
> might just turn off during the process.  My question is: is there some way
> I can transfer my current linux system to the new hard drive, then take

The way I transfer files from one directory to another is usualy
(cd /; tar cfp - etc root)|(cd /mnt/hdb1;tar xvfp -)

that will transfer files from /etc and /root to a second drive mounted
under /mnt/hdb1.

You can use rsync command also.

> the old hard drive out and put the new one where the old one was. Only I
> assume I'd have to partition the hard drive first which would make thos
> partitions hdb-- during the transfer.

I reinstalled my home system about 6 times on ine month for some strange
reasons. I wiped out the OS completely. Tried Redhat 7.1 then Mandrake 8.0
beta, then RedHat7.2, and Mandrake 8.1. Since I keep my home directory on
separate partition I never lost or had a need to restore my home files. I
also saved /etc and /root into tar file (/home/etc.tar) for quick
configuration restore after the installation. Prior to new OS installation 
I made backups on CD and tape drive. I do that anyway for offsite storage 
at my friends house. Since my home is about 4 GB big I carefuly organised 
directories so that the backup doesn't take more than about 600M at tis 
time. That means I do not backup everything. I don't need to save open 
source, rpms, and other stuff I know I can download from he net at any 
time. A script mybackup selects only important directories for backup so 
that I could recover in a matter of hour if need be.

What I would do is backup as much as you can to zip or whatever else you 
have, install the new OS on new drive which I would put in it's final 
configuration place, and copy files from the second drive (old drive) to 
the new one. The only reason for not doing it this way is if you need to 
use sound in order to manage the system.

That way you can go back to the old configuration in case things do not 
turn out the way you expect them.

> I really am dragging my feet about re-installing from scratch because (1)
> I'll have to use speakup instead of brltty as my rescue and root disk for
> debian of course don't have brltty and I haven't worked on doing that yet;
> (2) the speakup-enabled versions of debian are about two releases behind
> the current potato release and I've been on woody, so I'll have a bunch of
> upgrading to do; and (3) the last time I had to install completely my
> ethernet couldn't be set up from the rescue and root disk and I had to use
> ppp, but I've since removed my internal modem so I'll have to find a
> friend to borrow an external modem from if I have to revert to ppp instead
> of my nice fast dsl ethernet connection.

Which ethernet did you have problems with? Most are supported these days. 
You can get a replacement for $15 that works great with linux.

> If anybody can think of a way I can transfer my current system or can tell
> me how I can get my ethernet up and working so I can use that to do the
> package installs, I would appreciate it.

Another option would be to have a second system just for data transfer 
over the net from current one. I have more than one PC at home which would 
make it easy to do so. If you are in Silicon Valley we could probably make 
something out.

A third option, since you mentioned DSL, is to encrypt and tar files into
5 or 10 files, perhaps about 600MB each so you could burn a CD, copy them
over DSL to somebody elses system on the net, get your system ready and
then get the files back. Since the files would be encrypted you would not
need to worry about the data security. One way to do that is to use loop 
device where you create a virtual partition, encrypt it, and treat it as a 
regular file that can be moved around but only accessed by those who know 
the password or pass phrase.

I would be willing to help in such an experiment.

> I haven't bought a cdrom set since the first potato release, but maybe
> this is a good reason to keep them up-to-date; if I had purchased the
> latest one, I could use cdrom for the package installing that now has to
> be done by ppp or ethernet. Guess I learned something for the future, but
> it isn't
> helpful right at this moment. I'm not meaning to be a complainer; just
> would like to find an easier way out of this if I can.
> Thanks.
> Cheryl

-- 
Rafael