Hello, 1) Exact copy of hda1, hda2, hda3 onto hdb1, hdb2, hdb3 the problem here is that I am shinking the partition sizes beacuse 1) I don't need all the space and 2) I trying to make room to create a test AMD64 system setup. I only use WinXP for games and don't need all that space/
Will a simple dd if=/dev/dha2 of=/dev/hdb2 work even if the partition sizes are different? All info on /dev/hda2 will fit onto the shunken /dev/hdb2 (hda2 is only using about 10G).
No. That would involve resizing. (While copying I might add). The best you can do is repartition hdb3 to allow the partitions to fit.The partitons should be the same size if at all posible. If the new ones are larger the filesystems will stay the same size, but dd will complain if you ever try to copy them back.
As for resizing the ntfs partition, The latest ntfsresize will resize partions even if they are fragmented. Thus you can shrink the partition down to just a little bit more than the the space in use on it.
Please explain exactly why you are doing this.It will help me assist you in this. From what I can see you wanted to play around with amd64. you tried resizing partitons on hda and eventually gave up. So now you want to put the partitions onto the second disk which you have sized to the desired sizes. Your end goal is to use hdb as your main disk, eventually being used as the first harddrive. Is that correct?
If so, I know how to make this *VERY* painless, without any risk at all to hda. In fact no changes will be needed on hda.
If not, please email me in private explaining exactly what you have already done, and what you are trying to do. I should be able to help.