Upgrade Hard Drive

[jdow]

From: "Timothy Murphy" <gayleard at eircom.net>
Sent: Thursday, 2008, January 10 05:22


> Tom Spec wrote:
>
>> I am planning to move from one HD to another I need a bit of feedback.  I
>> am partitioned as follows:
>>
>> sda1 /boot (Linux Partition) 256M
>> sda2 LVM PV (Linux LVM Partition) 20G
>>
>> I was planning to.....
>>
>> 1) attach the new HD
>> 2) boot to a rescue CD
>> 3) partition the new HD exactly how the old one is
>> 4) dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdb1
>> 5) dd if=/dev/sda2 of=/dev/sdb2
>> 6) make the new HD bootable
>> 7) disconnect the old HD
>> 8) boot
>>
>> My questions...
>>
>> - Is this basically the right procedure?
>
> In my opinion dd is not the right tool for this.
> (I am amazed no-one else has said this.)
>
> I would partition the new disk as you like,
> and copy the contents of the old partitions to the new
> with "cp -a".

This is only required if you are increasing a partition's size and
you are not using the dreadful LVM nonsense. (Screw me up once, shame
on you. Screw me up twice, shame on me. I see to it that twice does
not happen.)

>> - Do I need to boot to the rescue CD or would single user (or emergency)
>> mode be good enough (in step 2)? - Exactly what steps are required to
>> "make the new HD bootable"? - Is there a way for me to make the old hd
>> "unbootable" so I can leave it in, but make sure it's the new one that
>> boots?
>
> I don't really see any problem.
> Assuming you have both disks in the same machine,
> you should be able to add a new entry in grub.conf
> allowing you to boot from the new disk.
> Then you could install grub on the second disk.

No - use the emergency boot. Otherwise you will not have a true copy of
the disk. The copy takes a finite time. The disk contents of the source
from which you are booted will change. So the process is not strictly
speaking safe unless you are booted to a third partition and nothing
has your copy source partition opened.

{^_^}