Re: Replacing hard disk used in existing filesystem
On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 11:52:34PM +0900, Mark Fletcher wrote:
> Anyway the disk concerned is a 1TB disk on which is mounted /opt, so I
> feel I should be able to replace it without major hassle. I have already
> backed it up fully to NAS.
>
> The only issue is that I don't have enough spare power connectors on my
> PC's power supply to attach both the new and the old disks at the same
> time.
>
> What I want to know is how can I remove the current drive from the
> filesystem so I can remove it physically without sending the machine
> into a tailspin? I have only ever set up the mapping of disk partitions
> to mount points at installation time, never afterwards, and so am not
> sure what to do.
>
> I am thinking the procedure will be something along the lines of:
>
> 1) modify my computer's mount settings such that /opt is part of the
> root filesystem instead of a separate mount point (HOW? manual edit
> of /etc/fstab or something more sophisticated?) This will cause me to
> lose access to everything on the old disk which is OK because it's all
> backed up and there is nothing there that's critical to the running of
> the machine.
Just comment out the /opt mount line in /etc/fstab. The comment
feature here is putting a # at the beginning of the line.
> 2) Power down the machine and remove the old disk, attach the new disk.
>
> 3) bring up the machine, partition and format the new disk. (is the tool
> for this fdisk?)
fdisk for partitioning, mkfs to create a filesystem on the
partition. You could create a label on the filesystem partition
at this time.
Read the man pages first. Use fdisk without writing anything at
the end to see what your current settings look like.
> 4) modify the machine's mount settings to go back to mounting /opt on
> the new disk (HOW?)
Uncomment the /etc/fstab line, and make sure it points to the
right disk interface, or UUID, or filesystem label if you
created one.
> 5) restore everything I want in /opt back from the backup.
>
> Even assuming I'm on the right lines, I don't know how to do steps 1 and
> 4 and am not totally confident about how to do 3, so would appreciate
> any advice.
You had it pretty much correct; don't worry. Double-check your
backups are good before beginning.
-dsr-
--
http://tao.merseine.nu/~dsr/eula.html is hereby incorporated by reference.
You can't defend freedom by getting rid of it.
Reply to: