> > | my harddisk is on the edge (still dma/ irq errors). Is there an easy way > > | to copy all partitions (Vfat WinNT/ Debian Linux/ Linux Swap) to new one > > | without reinstalling all things?
In my experience these "dma/irq errors" don't necessarily mean that your hd is about to die. I had these with some older hard disks and they (the errors) vanished when i turned off DMA data transfers (there is an option in the kernel configuration for that, or you could use hdparm). > ext2 partitions can easyly moved along with tar, and for swap partitions > it makes no sense to copy them. > > vfat/winNT partitions seem to me mor tricky (I've never did that) I've used cp -a to transfer both ext2 and vfat filesystems without any problems. I don't know if there are some risks in copying open files, anyway i played it safe and booted from cdrom before copying. Hope this helps Matthias