Am I on the right track? HDD transfers.

[JoeDude]

Situation: Old 80 Gb (IDE) Maxtor hdd failing due to past overheating.
Partitions: 5Gb Ubuntu / Ext2
1 GB Swap
44 Gb /Home Ext2
40 Gb WinXp
New Hdd: 250 Gb Maxtor (IDE)

The plan: I intend to partiton the new hdd to 1 Gb Swap, 6 Gb / Ext3, 50GB Ext3, 50Gb Fat32, then make the remining 128 Gb storage space for the iso's.

I would then make .iso's with each partition and then copy the iso to the new partition. I think I will have to reinstall Grub if I do it this way.

I've looked online for "easy" ways, but there seems to be none.

The question: What do you guys do? Will what I am planning work?

[Void Main]

When you say ISOs I assume you mean images of your file systems on your hard drive and not really ISOs (CD/DVD file system images). Why even create images? Why not just dd the file systems from the old partitions to the new partitions? I have explained how I do it a few times here I know. Let me find an example... Here is one of many:

viewtopic.php?t=1703

[worker201]

Here's another place where drive swaps were discussed which you might find useful:
viewtopic.php?t=1481

[Void Main]

Yep, copying is another way and that is a good link for it. I personally would dd the file systems but either way works.

[JoeDude]

OK, done...

Stupid question time...

Does it make sense that the copy over to the new drive was larger than the original?

[worker201]

Like how much bigger? I know that some drives use different block sizes, but that shouldn't make too much difference.

[JoeDude]

like...a 50 gb partition being copied over to the new and being 67.3 Gb....that's the xp partition.

/ 5 Gb to 6.7Gb
/home 24Gb to 41Gb

[JoeDude]

OK, tell me does this make sense.

I dd'd it just as the man pages and void recomended. I partitioned first, followed the format, the whole 9 yards. What I think was happening was because I was copying to a larger partition, and the original was say 90% filled, the nwere one was filled to 90% as well.

Once I partitioned (one at a time) and copied immediately after, following the exact same sizes, then after completion, resized and started the next partition, everything went smooth. Sizes matched and everything.

[Void Main]

I partitioned first, followed the format,

You didn't have to format when you dd. In fact dd'ing the partition over would have wiped out whatever format you did. All you need to do is partition followed by the dd. dd copies the file system from the one partition to the other byte for byte. Like I probably said in the other message I normally create the new destination partitions slightly larger than the partitions I am dd'ing from and then do the resize2fs after the the dd so the file system is increased to the full size of the partition. Sounds like that's what you did in the end.

[JoeDude]

Reinstall of grub was being a pain. I kept getting error 15 when I tried:

Code: Select all

sudo grub

find /boot/grub/stage1 (result was hd0,1)

root (hd0,1)

setup (hd0)

quit

So I did a bit of research, and found that actually mounting root could help and tried this:

Code: Select all

sudo mkdir /mnt/root

sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/hda1 /mnt/root

sudo mount -t proc none /mnt/root/proc

sudo mount -o bind /dev /mnt/root/dev

sudo chroot /mnt/root /bin/bash

sudo grub

find /boot/grub/stage1

root (hd0,1)

setup (hd0)

quit

This worked like a charm! Thanx for the help fellas!

[Void Main]

I just boot from the rescue disk and let it mount all my partitions and then:

# chroot /mnt/sysimage
# grub-install

[JoeDude]

well...I was pretty proud of myself.

[Void Main]

Heh heh, sorry, didn't mean to take that away from you. :)

[JoeDude]

I figured out what I was doing wrong on the first set. I was telling it to setup (hd0,1) instead of setting up (hd0)!