[linux-lvm] LVM question on move and resize

[Dieter Stüken]

John Koshi wrote:
> Actually I do have a large USB disk (Seagate 160GB)
> and had considered using it during this expansion of 
> the Linux installation. I'm interested in seeing your
> solution, in this case.

Hi John,

i frequently reorganized my data by extending my VG by 
a new disk (vgextend) and moved all data off the unwanted
disk using "vgmove". Afterwards I may unplug the unwanted disk
from my VG (vgreduce). All this may be performed, while people
are working on this server! But I'm using hot-plugable
SATA disks on a raid controller.

But you talk about a laptop and an USB disk, and the device to
replace is an extended partition, not a hot pluggable SATA disk.
So I think there are too much traps in your case to fail.

Instead I would simply install a plain ext2 partition on the
USB disk, mount it and copy all data using simple "cp -a" to
the USB disk. Then erase hda4 and recreate it as a plain primary
partition, install LVM again and copy the data back. This is
not as fancy as using LVM, but much saver in your case.

After all I even think: it may be currently ugly, but it works. 
So may be you should keep this setup until you really need
to change it.

regards, Dieter.