copying harddisks

mooerito · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:22 pm Post subject: copying harddisks

hello there!

i installed gentoo on my old 80gb harddisk. now i got a new 200gb harddisk. is there a way i can copy the contents of the 80gb harddisk to the 200gb harddisk without having to reinstall the operating syetem? i suppose there is some way to do this with dd, but i coudlnt figure out how.
my 80gb hd got 2 windows partitions with fat32 and 2 reiserfs, 1 ext3 and 1 swap partition on it. if i have to reinstall windows its no big deal (its only there to run world of warcraft, so there isnt a lot to reinstall), but reinstalling my gentoo would kill me.

can anyone help me?

thanks
moo

BlackEdder · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:41 pm Post subject:

Here you go:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Hard-Disk-Upgrade/copy.html

mooerito · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:50 pm Post subject:

thanks for the tip, but its not exactly what i had in mind. i thought maybe there is some way to copy the disk bit by bit, because if i do it like this ill have to manually set stuff (proc, mbr) and also my windows wont work afterwards (its not a big deal, but id prefer if i wouldnt have to reinstall)
any way of doing it bit by bit, "clone" the whole thing. not on filesystem level, but on the datalayer level.

mooerito · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:56 pm Post subject:

i just figured out that

cazort · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 3:59 pm Post subject:

You can use GNU parted to copy on a by-partition basis. However, there are some limitations. Only some filesystems are supported, and then you are limited by the quirks of whatever filesystem you're using. If you're using NTFS, you're screwed, although if you're using FAT32, you should be able to just copy the thing over. Reiserfs (thankfully) is supported, as well as ext2/3

Check this out:

http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/

Mind you, I've never done this, and things like this scare me, so I'd be careful!

mooerito · Posted: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:11 pm Post subject:

i know about partd, but i dont wanna copy on a partition level, i wanna copy on disk level. move the whole thing at once to the new disk. maybe i was a little unclear about that before.

im not to scared about that, worst thing that can happen is the new disk doenst work, so what, put in the old disk again, be happy and try to figure out how to connect 3hds, 1 dvd and 1dvdr to 4 ide ports. :-)

since i dont have the new disk yet i cant just try, i just wanted to know iin advance how it works, but maybe ill just have to do try and error.