Upgrading HDD - options for closing existing install

[justaguy93]

I am going to be upgrading the hard disk in my laptop shortly and I know Mac systems have a utility that you can use to clone your existing install on to a new drive so that you do not need to reinstall the OS. I've done some searches and there seem to be a few options in Linux for this type of thing. Could anyone share their opinion on what commands or tools are the easiest to use for this situation?

Thanks!

-justaguy93

[kidders]

Hi there,

There's no reason why you can't simply copy everything from one filesystem to another. In most cases, trying to do anything more elaborate just complicates things unnecessarily.

Since you have a laptop, you may not have the hardware necessary to plug both your new and old hard disks in at the same time, so rather than a straight copy...
cp -dpR /old /new...you might need to do something more like...
tar cf old.tar /old
mkisofs old.iso old.tar && cdrecord old.iso
...
...I'm not sure how much you know about how Linux works, so it's hard to guess how much detail to post.

In general terms though...
There's absolutely no reason to have to re-install your OS. It takes long enough to get a Linux distro working the way you like it once ... having to do it a second time would be awful!
In principle, all you need to do is copy all the files in your system from one disk to the other, and you're more or less done. You need to be very careful to preserve all permissions, symlinks, etc. though. If you can't copy directly from disk to disk, you might need to use your network, a DVD recorder, a USB hard disk, or something like that.
You'll need to install a bootloader onto the new disk once you're done, so be sure you know how to do that before you start.
Needless to say, none of this should be done while your Linux install is actually running. A LiveCD or a second Linux installation are essential.


If you like, I could give you more precise suggestions (ie post something that might actually be useful to you!). Post the output of df -h, and maybe a little about how you'd like to move your stuff from one disk to the other.

(Incidentally, I take it the old and new hard disks won't be the same size.)