Re: How to Move from 1 drive to another?

[Jonathan Wheelhouse <wheelhouse@exemail.com.au>]

Sven Hoexter <sven@timegate.de> writes:

> On Sat, Jul 31, 2004 at 04:30:35PM +1000, Jonathan Wheelhouse wrote:
>> Hi
>> 
>> I am running Debian unstable on a 30GB drive (IBM Deskstar 75gxp)
>> using ext3.  I recently bought a 120GB drive (Western Digital WD1200).
>> 
>> The family have 5 accounts.
>> 
>> What I would like to do is to make the 120GB drive the main one (using
>> ReiserFS) and use the 30GB drive for data.
>> 
>> So, the plan is to install (via the sid installer) Debian on the 120GB
>> drive.  I know
>> - to install the current packages I've got I can
>> install them via dpkg --get-selections|--set-selections
>> - use /etc/* file as configuration for new drive
>> 
>> My question is - what is the easiest|best way of copying|moving all
>> the accounts and their data across?  Do I simply have to recreate the
>> users on the new drive and then copy across their home drives?  Or can
>> I just rely on everything being set up OK if I just copy across
>> /etc/passwd and /etc/group.
> I would boot a Linux Live CD like knoppix, partition and format the new drive,
> copy everything from the old drive to the new one, chroot into the "new"
> system, install a boot loader, reboot and be happy.
> That is a lot easier then installation from scratch and you can keep
> everything installed and configured so far.

This sounds like the least amount of work and still giving a good
result - I'll give it a go.

Off to read about chroot .

Thanks
Jonathan