On Sat, 15 Feb 2014, André Nunes Batista wrote: > On Mon, 2014-02-10 at 14:13 -0800, Patrick Bartek wrote: > > Well, the hard drive in my personal desktop machine has been > > running virtually continuously for 7 years, and I'm gettin' > > nervous. So, time to transfer Wheezy to a new, bigger drive; > > something I've never done before. I've always clean installed. > > So, here's what I plan with a few questions. Opinions and > > suggestions appreciated before I take the leap. > > > > I'll be using a gparted LiveCD and rsync for the transfers. > > Everything done as root, of course. There are other OSes on the > > old drive, but I won't be transferring them. The old drive will be > > removed after Wheezy is transferred, static bagged and stored in a > > drawer just in case. > > > > 1. Partition and format new 500GB SATA III drive. No LVM, RAID or > > GPT. [Note i] > > > > 2. Is 'rsync -axH <mount point source partition> <mount point > > destination partition>' sufficient to copy ALL files with > > permissions, etc? > > > > 3. Move the old grub.cfg out of the new /boot/grub/. > > > > 4. Ditto for old device.map.[Note ii] > > > > 5. Shutdown, remove old drive, reboot with LiveCD. > > > > 6. Chroot to new drive / partition: chroot <mount point / > > partition> > > > > 7. Create new grub.cfg: 'grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg' > > > > 8. Install grub on new drive's MBR: 'grub-install <new drive's > > system name, probably /dev/sda>' > > > > 9. Shutdown, reboot without LiveCD. See if it took. > > > > 10. Troubleshoot, if it didn't. > > > > > > So, any glaring errors? Any better (read easier) ways to do this? > > > > Thanks. > > > > Patrick > > > > > > > > i. The new drive will be partitioned, thusly: / on 1st > > Primary; /home on Second Primary; swap on Third Primary; Primary 4 > > Extended for future use. > > > > ii. Read that grub-mkconfig will create a new device map on the > > fly, if none exists. True? Also, sometimes leaving the old one in > > place causes problems. True? If I need to create a new one is > > there a utility that does that, or do I just decipher it and make > > the necessary changes manually? > > > > > > I've never done this -> wouldn't it be possible to "dd-it", boot and > then extend the home partition?
Yes, dd will clone an entire drive (or a partition) including the filesystem, partition table, etc. So, there's no need to partition or format the new drive. Saves time. But dd also "copies" all the "empty" space on the source drive, too. So, in that respect, if all you want to do is backup (or move) data to a new location, it wastes time. cp or rsync are better for that. As to resizing a partition: One should never do that on a partition that's "in use." You're asking for trouble. Even doing so on an inactive partition, backup your data first just to be safe. The reason I opted for rsync instead of dd is the source and target drives are from two different eras with different configurations, and cloning the old drive to the new had the potential of causing problems and, at the very least, reducing R/W efficiency. I won't go into the details, but suffice to say, I thought it better to partition and format the new drive first, copy over the files, edit a couple of configs, and build and install a new grub. More work? Yes. But I'll have a more efficient, faster system. B -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20140215101845.5ffaa...@debian7.boseck208.net
