new hard drive

[Chris G]

On Fri, May 02, 2008 at 02:43:37AM -0400, scott wrote:
> I have a problem that I haven't encountered before on linux. My hard 
> drive is almost full.
> 
> I am wondering what I can do. Install a second drive and copy all my 
> partitions, then remove the old drive and still have a bootable drive?
> 
> Anyone know if this can be done? Sort of a hot swap scenario.
> 
I'd recommend adding a second drive and moving *some* of the
partitions across to it.  Or, if your installation has everything on
one parition, create a new partition on the new drive for /home for
example and then copy all your existing /home hierarchy to the new
drive, rename your old /home to /oldhome and then mount the new
partition as /home.

When you're happy it's all OK you can delete /oldhome.

You do need to analyse where all your space is being used up first to
decide which hierarchies it makes sense to move.  It is very
convenient having /home on its own drive though.

To see where all the space is going:-

    sudo du -xk --max-depth=1 /

This will tell you all about the root partition, if you have other
partitions you'll have to do the same but with the last parameter
changed, e.g. for home:-

    sudo du -xk --max-depth=1 /home


(... and the --max-depth=1 *is* necessary so that you don't follow
mount points to other drives, *and* it doesn't ignore the space used
below depth 1)

-- 
Chris Green