[ale] linux harddrive upgrade utility (similar to MaxBlast,etc)?

James P. Kinney III jkinney at localnetsolutions.com
Tue Nov 12 08:48:21 EST 2002


Never, ever use a drive makers "utility" to do anything on a drive used
for linux. Most of those utilities require special drivers loaded into
windows to make them work. 

Do a clean install of your favorite distro onto the new drive with it
set as hda and the old one as hdc (for better performance). Don't touch
the old one during the install. Copy over your home directory to the new
drive after the install, and then all the other special tweaks to /etc
files.

Or, if the old drive has a /home partition, mount it into the new
installation directly. If you are feeling really industrious, copy all
the data from the old drive to a temporary spot on the new drive.
Repartition the old drive to be one partition, make it /home and mount
it in. Having /home on a separate partition is good. On a separate drive
is even better.

On Tue, 2002-11-12 at 00:14, Christopher Bergeron wrote:
> Ok, I'm looking to upgrade my paltry 30GB HD with a big fat one with 
> lots of space.  
> 
> Here's the background info:
> 
> a) both drives are Maxtor drives (different models; same manufacturer)
> b) the Maxtor drive(s) shipped with a "utility" disk (MaxBlast) that can 
> duplicate the contents of the smaller drive onto the larger drive
> 
> My question is this:  has anyone used this utility with a "linux" based 
> drive before?  Is it reliable?  Can I use it on a totally separate cpu 
> from the linux box itself (my linux box doesn't have a floppy drive). 
>  If not, is there a linux utility that I can use to dupe my HD onto the 
> new one?  I've used partimage (quite a cool program I might add) and dd; 
> but I'd like to know if I can use this utility for the sake of simplicity.
> 
> Does this utility happen at a lower level than the OS (since it's 
> independently bootable)?  and Does anyone have any experience with said 
> beast and/or upgrading HDs under linux?
> 
> Much thanks in advance for replies...
> -CB
> 
> 
> ---
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-- 
James P. Kinney III   \Changing the mobile computing world/
President and CEO      \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244             \.___________________________./

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
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