On 10/08/2009 12:13 PM, Konstantin Svist wrote:
On 10/08/2009 10:47 AM, Daniel B. Thurman wrote:
> On 10/08/2009 10:31 AM, Konstantin Svist wrote:
>
>> On 10/08/2009 09:48 AM, Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Is there an easy way to transfer a system from one drive (holding
>>> boot, swap, lvm partitions, in the default F11 layout) to a different
>>> hard drive, if the new drive is smaller?
>>>
>>> If the new drive is larger, dd could be used in a fairly
>>> straightforward way.
>>>
>>> However, I want to try replacing a 160 GB hard drive with an Intel 80
>>> GB solid-state drive, just for fun...
>>>
>>> I suspect a re-install might be easier.
>>>
>>> - Mike
>>>
>>>
>> gparted (or qtparted) will do what you want. I don't remember if it
>> can resize the partitions as you copy them, but in the worst case you
>> can resize first then copy.
>>
>> or you can use cp -a to copy over all necessary files and run
>> grub-install to restore the grub boot loader if it's installed in MBR
>> (default)
>>
>>
> There is a potential problem when using partition resizing - it can mess
> up the partition tables and render the drive unbootable - need to be
> careful here, as it "bit me in the a.."!
>
> FWIW,
> Dan
>
>
Really?
I've never had gparted bite me in the ass like that. Happened a few
times with PartitionMagic in the past, though.
Yes. What happened was that different resizing and moving partitions around
left behind "ghost" table entries and confused certain disk programs but was
transparent to fdisk. I was forced to erase the entire drive and lay down
the partitions ONCE, and leave it alone. What I decided to do was to set
each of my new OS drives in a specific way, every time, allowing for
multiple
OS installations, planned or not. This was not a problem with older versions
of linux distros, but Fedora changed *something* in regards to the anaconda
installer and it FAILED to find a SINGLE partition because it "barfed"
when it
encountered "extraneous" table entries. This happened to me for F10 and for
F11. I did not wanted to go through that nightmare again.
It is possible there was a bug, but since it happened to me on F10 & F11,
this is the course of action that I decided to take, at least, for now.