Re: Copying Debian to another drive
jb701@uku.co.uk wrote:
I have Debian sarge loaded and running fine on a Thinkpad (laptop). I
now want to copy my setup onto another hard drive, so I can try some
things out without ruining this setup (which took a lot of effort to get
running). How do I go about doing that? The laptop can only run one
hard drive at a time. I can connect to another Debian machine (running
woody). The laptop started with woody (same CDs used as the other
machine) and I think I kept all the downloaded deb files used to
upgrade. Is there any way to copy the setup rather than setting up a
new hard drive from scratch?
What people most often do is remove the hard drive connect them to a
different pc, image the drive, and then put it back in the laptop.
Removing the hard drive is really easy on thinkpads. On my x31 the hard
drive is under the right shift key and is held in by one screw.
You then need an adapter to take the mini-ide + power of laptops and use
it in a normal pc. Another option is to buy an external USB hard drive
housing. You still need the adapter but then the drive can be hooked up
without having to rewire things. The adapters are about $7 here in the
states and most of the places that sell hard drives, motherboards and
the like carry them. Basically it does 20 pin + power => 40 pin IDE
standard with a power coupler just like a normal IDE drive.
As for the imaging itself, dd is really simple. Or you could just tar
the whole thing up and save it.
Personally, I store my /etc and a package list plus whatever is
important from /usr/src and /home. Lately been using revision control
for this which makes backups easy. I can then reinstall fairly quickly
and have all of my tuned configs.
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