Karl Larsen wrote:
>
> I have this computer on /dev/sda and the new hard drive is /dev/sdb.
> This F7 is all in /dev/sda6 and I want to copy /dev/sda6 to /dev/sdb5. I
> tried dd but it failed I think because /dev/sdb5 is smaller 10 GB than
> /dev/sda6 which is 30 GB. It ended with an error message.
>
> So back to cp -a but there is a hitch. I redid /sdb5 with another
> ext3 file system and I can mount it to /mnt on this computer. So it is
> easy to cp all from /dev/sda6 to /dev/sdb5 but, with a simple # cp -a /
> /mnt it will do all that fine but then want to copy /mnt to the new
> /dev/sdb5.
>
> Does anyone know a secret that will work? I will read man cp again :-)
>
1 - make sure the target partition (/dev/sdb5 from the looks of things) is
AS LARGE OR LARGER than /dev/sda6.
You can do this check by:
$ su # become root
# fdisk /dev/sda
...
Command (m for help): p # you enter the "p" part at the end
...
Command (m for help): q # you enter the "q" part at the end
# fdisk /dev/sdb
...
Command (m for help): p # you enter the "p" part at the end
...
Command (m for help): q # you enter the "q" part at the end
#
then compare the "Blocks" column entry for /dev/sda6 and /dev/sdb5,
making sure the one for sdb5 is larger.
2 - Make a clean partition on /dev/sdb5:
# mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdb5
3 - Check the partition you just made:
# fsck -f /dev/sdb5
4 - Mount the new partition:
# mount /dev/sdb5 /mnt
5 - Copy over everything from sda6 to sdb5
# cd $MOUNT_POINT_FOR_sda6 # probably "/"
# find . -mount -print | grep -v '^./lost+found' | cpio -pdumva /mnt
Cpio will preserve any hard and soft links it finds and will also
correctly copy any device nodes. I'm not totally sure you can say that
about "cp -a". As above, the find command piped into cpio will also
preserve any mount points, but not try to copy the stuff inside the
mount point. Note also the "grep -v '^./lost+found" part of the pipe
prevents copying over any bad/orphaned files from sda6 to sdb5.
BTW: using dd(1) on two different partitions usually results in the "of="
partition thinking it's the same size as the "if=" partition. When the
"of=" partition is the smaller of the two, this means trouble later on.
When the "of=" partition is the larger of the two, you'll end up wasting
some disk space. Most of this kind of issue is fixable in file-system
editors, but these are pretty much "guru only" sorts of tools, too.
Hope this helps'idly,
-S
