New HD Questions:

southerngentooman · n00b Joined: 26 Jan 2005 Posts: 35

Hi yall,

I'll be shopping for a new HD next week and I'm in the process of preparing my system for a smooth transfer. I'm considering a WD that includes a bootable cd setup utility. If my understanding is correct, this utility should duplicate my existing setup onto the new drive, but I'm not sure if it can read linux partitions. So, my first question is, have you tried this with ext2 and reiser partitions? If so, how did it go?

Also, I have a cdr and was thinking it might be a good idea to build a setup disc of sorts. So, how about some suggestions from you who have had a successful experience with making and restoring a system with a set of cdrs.

A complication is that I intend to add several more partitions to the new drive, and currently I'm setup with 4 primary partitions.

3rd, I have my /home directory and a vfat data partition on another harddrive. So, two things here. One, after I get my system running again with the new hard drive, I'd like to move the hdb1 vfat partition to the new drive and then increase the size of hdb2, which is my /home partition so that it occupies the whole disk. So, If I could get some recommendations on doing this I'd appreciate it. I don't mind making some temporary changes, like I could unplug my dvd player and setup fstab for 3 ides. Two, I have tried to recall all the config files that I've had to edit at one point or another and as I think of them, I've been adding them to a little backup script to save them in my home directory. I figure I've probably overlooked several of these, so here is the list that I have so far. If you have suggestions for additions I'd appreciate it. I'm hoping I don't need this, but I figure it can't hurt. ;-)

manny15 · Guru Joined: 01 Dec 2002 Posts: 473 Location: USA

Well, I don't really understand your partitioning scheme (a table of current and what you want would help) but it seems you've got linux and windows partitions on one HD and you want to copy them to another. First of all, unless the utility says it supports ext2/reiser it probably doesn't So I would try NOT using the util at all. You can use GNU parted to copy/resize your partitions. It supports fat16/32 and ext2/3 reiserfs. BUT it cannot so much with NTFS partitions.

So, if you are using NTFS, maybe you can use that util to copy your windows partitions, just leave room for linux. Then you can use tar to migrate your linux partitions. If you don't plan on resizing your windows partition, you may be able to copy it using dd.

southerngentooman · n00b Joined: 26 Jan 2005 Posts: 35

manny15 · Guru Joined: 01 Dec 2002 Posts: 473 Location: USA

Well, how about a table like this:

southerngentooman · n00b Joined: 26 Jan 2005 Posts: 35

OK,

Well, we're talking about 3 files really. Again, what I have now is already posted.

I suppose this would work for gentoo on the new drive:

manny15 · Guru Joined: 01 Dec 2002 Posts: 473 Location: USA

I don't thing sharing the video and data reiserfs partitions is going to be a problem. As long as both OSes use the same version of reiserfs it should be ok. You're only sharing data anyway. If you were sharing a filesystem that was important to the OS, like /, /usr, /boot, then I'd be concerned. Although, I bet you can easily share /home. And if you are clever, I bet /boot can be shared also. Which reminds me, I recommend that you make both (or one if you want) /boot a primary partition (1-4), hopefully /dev/hda1. Because although overall we don't have the limitation where /boot must be before the Xth cylinder (can't remember the number, but I think it's 2GB), it's better to play it safe.

Oh, something to consider. An ext3 filesystem can be read as an ext2 filesystem if the OS doesn't support ext2. This not only applies to Linux, but to partitioning software. I migrated an ext3 partition once using... I guess something like partition magic... this was long ago. And it worked, but it copied as an ext2. All I had to do was put the journal back in. If I had reiserfs, that wouldn't have been possible. I know the program you mentioned doesn't support Linux filesystem, but it's just something to keep in mind.

southerngentooman · n00b Joined: 26 Jan 2005 Posts: 35

Well what the heck, I could always change it if it don't work ;-)

I was thinking of sharing /home anyway and just using a different username so my config files don't get confused.
And this simplfies fdisk setup a bit. So, going with /home and /root shared I get this setup:

gentoo: