Re: Duplicating drives (different sizes).

From: sean (sean_at_fredcom.com)
Date: 03/22/04 

Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 08:55:10 -0500

John:

Make a boot floppy
shutdown
swap hda and hdb
boot from floppy setting root=/dev/hda1
reinstall lilo (I dont remember the exact command for that)
shutdown/reboot
And your system should boot from the new drive

I say use the boot floppy since I have had problems getting lilo to
properly initialize a second drive for booting. It is simpler to just
make a boot floppy and boot the new drive, the initialize it with lilo.
  I switched to Grub a long time a got too. I think it offers much more
flexibility. (however lilo served me well for a long time too)

~Sean

John Wrate wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have a Linux system which runs on an 8 Gb. IDE hard disk. I have a
> second 20 Gb drive that I want to use as the main drive.
>
> This is how the mounting looks like right now:
>
> /dev/hda1 on / type ext2
> /proc on /proc type proc
> /dev/hdb1 on /back type ext2
>
> With hdb1 being the larger newer drive.
>
> I have made copies (cp -au) of all files from hda1 to hdb1 and hdb1
> also has a "swap" file configured. So basically I have a copy of
> everything on hdb1 and I want to make it the main drive.
>
> I have also e2fsck /dev/hdb1 and everything seems fine.
>
> Finally, I have issued the following command to make hdb1 bootable:
>
> lilo -r /back
>
> Is this enough? I mean, if I shutdown the system and connect the 20
> Gb drive(now /dev/hdb) so that it is the only system drive should it
> boot?
>
> I know both drives contain the exact same files, but I don't know if I
> have set up the MBR correctly in the second drive by just issueing the
> lilo -r command.
>
> Any help will be very much appreciated.

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