New HD in laptop

[Fred Roller]

Ken Adams wrote:
> I am looking at changing the HD in my laptop running 9.04.
>
> Is there a way to copy the original hd over to the new one and keep the
> system as complete as it is at the moment. I really don't want to have
> the job of replicating the old system from scratch.
>
> Rgds Ken
>
>
>   
DD to me is the fastest especially if you have a usb external case.  
($30-$40
 US and you can repurpose the old hdd afterwards.)  Assuming this plug 
in the hdd and ID the device's ID (/dev/sdb most likely) and confirm 
functionality.  From there boot to a live CD and open a terminal.

make sure neither of your drives are mounted:

df -h

You shouldn't see any of the /dev/sd[a-z] mounted any where.  If you 
have no other usb drives plugged in then you should only have /dev/sda 
(your old drive) and /dev/sdb (the new drive in usb case)

asumption:
/dev/sda = old drive
/dev/sdb = new drive

run the command

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=4096 conv=notrunc,noerror

it will go quiet.  If something goes wrong the command will error out.  
To calculate the fastest time the command will take assume 25Mbits/sec.  
A couple of hundred gigs will take a while, take the wife to dinner.

Once the process is complete then run gparted to stretch the new drive 
partition to capacity or use the extra space as you see fit.  This 
assumes the new drive is larger.  Check the archive for more in depth 
details, we covered similar in the last month or two.  Good luck.

-- 
Fred
www.fwrgallery.com

"Life is like linux, simple.  If you are fighting it you are doing something wrong."