Well I have carried out the procedure outlined in your message, but I have had some problems. When booting the new disc it always failed with a reiserfs problem (I once rebuilt the tree), after 3 attempts I still had errors so I formated the partition with ext2, copied all the files and rebooted. IT WORKED.
The only error I have detected is during boot I get a warning "unable to open an initial console", the screen freezes until x is started. This doesn't seem to be a big problem but I would like to fix it -- any ideas???? thanks for all who helped Paul On Friday 16 Sep 2005 16:33, Michael Kintzios wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Paul [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Sent: 16 September 2005 15:23 > > To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org > > Subject: [gentoo-user] Replacing main harddisk > > > > > > Hi all, > > > > My main harddisk is starting to go, making awful noise and > > causing the > > computer to freeze. > > I have another spare disk and I wondered if somebody would > > list out the > > procedure I need to follow to create and format the > > partitions and to copy > > all of the faulty disk contents. Then how to boot from the new disk. > > The new disk will need the following partitions:- > > /boot ext2 > > /swap > > / reiserfs > > 1. Using the dd command or a cloning software derivative: > If the new disk is *exactly* the same size like the old one, then using > the dd command you can basically clone your failing disk, including MBR > and all partitions, including swap!, bit by bit: > ========================= > dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb > ========================= > > On the other hand, if the new drive is larger then you will need to > partition it, exactly like the old one. On the new drive, create the > same entries you find with fdisk for your old drive: # fdisk -l > /dev/hda > > Also, don't forget to clone the MBR: > ========================= > dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb bs=446 count=1 > ========================= > If you also want to clone the partition table (as opposed to writing one > afresh with fdisk) then increase the bs=446 to 512. > > 2. Using tar > If at the same time you want to alter the partition sizes on the new > drive then you can use the tar command, for each partition except for > swap. Besides creating partitions of a preferred size on the new drive, > you will also need to mkfs for each partition. Still have to use dd to > clone the MBR. > ========================= > # mkdir -p /mnt/new_boot > # mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/new_boot > # cd /boot > # tar lcpf - .|(cd /mnt/new_boot; tar xpvf -) > ========================= > Repeat for / and also use tar -d (check $ man tar) to verify that the > directories were copied over without any mishaps. Personally I prefer > tar because it is faster, it defragments the drive's contents and can > verify that the new directory was not corrupted in the tarring/untarring > process. > > 3. There's a number of backup apps out there which can do more or less > the same using a different front end; e.g. partimage. > > Good luck. > -- > Regards, > Mick -- This message has been sent using kmail with gentoo linux -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
