[Mageia-discuss] Copying system to new disk

David W. Hodgins davidwhodgins at gmail.com
Mon Nov 14 18:58:51 CET 2011


On Mon, 14 Nov 2011 05:00:16 -0500, Juergen Harms <Juergen.Harms at unige.ch> wrote:

> Before going to dd, I will try partitioning my new disk with gparted (or
> the Mageia ISO) - do all the disk layout re-arrangements I can think of
> and than copy individual file-systems with tar - should be substantially
> faster since it skips all unused space - for the windows partition that
> would give
> cd /media/windows ; tar cf - . | (cd /<new-windows-path>; tar xf -)

If you only had linux, and used labels on the filesystems, and in
grub, that would be fine.

Because you have w7 installed, the mbr should be copied too.  As the
drive is failing, you should assume you will only get one chance to
copy it.

I would install the new drive, boot from any live/rescue cd/dvd,
and use dd to copy the drive
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=64M
Of course, make sure the device letters are correct. :-)

Then shutdown the system, remove the old drive (Never boot into w7
with both drives connected, after the copy). and move the connector
for the new drive to the same connector the old drive used.

Then, confirm all file systems are bootable.  After that, you can
resize existing partitions, or add new ones, as desired.  Note that
you will have to resize the extended partition, if present, before
resizing or adding new logical partitions. The gparted tool is
probably the best for that.

Regards, Dave Hodgins


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