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Re: Backup From One Drive - Restore To Another



Dennis Stosberg wrote:
Am Donnerstag, 28. April 2005 06:15 schrieb Scarletdown:


eventually reselling it.  However, the primary hard drive is
starting to develop errors (I'm doing an fsck on it at this
time).  After the fsck is done, I plan on eventually swapping
out that drive for a different one.  But, I really don't want to
have to go through the Debian install process again.  That being


If you plug both the old and the new disk into one system, you can start a cd-bootable linux system (like knoppix, damn small linux, etc.). Use that system to create a new file system on the target disk and copy the complete contents of your old file system onto the new one.

You can use tar, "cp -a" or maybe "rsync -aH --numeric-ids" for that. Be sure to exclude the /proc and /sys directories and create them on the target disk seperately.
Finally reinstall your bootloader on the new disc and you're done.

I briefly considered that option, but vetoed it in short order, because the 2nd hard drive in this system is a bit of a PITA to remove. Instead, I discovered that Mondo Archive is going to fit the bill perfectly. In fact, the backup with Mondo is almost done, and it looks like it may have also archived the mbr so I won't have to manually install GRUB on the replacement drive. I'll be burning the ISO image to a CD tomorrow and will try the restore then.

If this works like I think it is going to, then after this system is complete and properly tweaked, I'll use mondo again to make another full backup, which I _should_ then be able to use to as the foundation for building additional Sid boxes instead of doing the full, time-consuming installation from scratch.



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