windows on 1st drive gentoo on 2nd drive. Can I move them?

[duby2291]

Let me start by saying that using hdparm to measure the drives bandwidth, the 1st drive is about twice as fast as the second drive so I want to put gentoo on that drive. But I need to backup the first drive, then image the gentoo drive to the first one, including all partitions. Then I can restore the backup of the first drive to the 2nd one.

If you found yourself in a similar situation how you go about doing it?

EDIT: And then there is the matter of them booting. Grub will be simple, I just need to boot a livecd and fix fstab, grub.conf and grub. But what do I do about the windows MBR?
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CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3800+ X2 @ 2500mhz
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GPU: nVidia GeForce 7600 GT
OS: Gentoo Linux 2006.1

[trueriver]

hi,

The way you are proposing to move the data seems workable. Personally, I would backup the user data from *both* dirives, then image windows onto the other drive, re-install gentoo, and then restore the gentoo data. This is because I trust myself to install gentoo more than I trust myself to install windows.

Using Grub to boot, the trick is to use the map command to lie to Windows. Map the drives onto one another, so that the BIOS tells windows it is on the first HDD. Then it will boot quite happiliy. Wherever the dirves are situated on the physical system, the OS drive will always be C: to windows.

Depending on some black magic that I have never worked out, sometimes Windows asks to be re-authorised when it detects a change in the disk it is on: you should be able to do this online but if you need help MS do provide a freephone number to call. Explain it is the same computer and you have just upgraded your disk drive and they should get you back on. As I say, this does not always arise and I have never worked out what tirggers it.

hope that helps
River~~

[bammbamm808]

I have had several systems dualbooting linux/windows on separate HDD. My way around the Windows MBR thing was to either install Windows first, so it could be satisfied that it was on the first drive, then use Grub to chainload the Windows HDD, wherever it ended up in my always-changing system. I think you could do the Windows MBR fix similarly by disconnecting the other device first, then install Grub in the MBR of the linux drive, and chainload from there.
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