[ale] Dupe drive with slightly different capacity

[Alex Carver]

On 2/22/2014 03:29, JD wrote:
> Start with dd to copy the entire HDD.
> Use parted/gparted to resize.
> Be happy.

Then I shall be happy and not worry. :)

> 
> If the HDDs are different sector sizes (512b vs 4k), then use gparted on the new
> HDD and fsarchive to migrate all the file systems to the new HDD.  gparted will
> copy partitions too. The change in sector sizes does matter.

The drives are part number identical and they're both old IDEs so 512b
sectors .  The only difference is one has one more cylinder than the
other.  It was thinking ahead for possibly swapping out the drive (at
8GB that is 80% full) to another one that is bigger.

> If the new HDD needs to be GPT and the old one is MSDOS ... I think gparted is
> the answer, but a fresh install is needed to deal with boot differences.  I just
> did the 512b-->4k and MBR-->GPT switch a few weeks ago. It was not smooth.
> Ended up doing a fresh install first, then moving data over, then taking a list
> of installed packages and installing those. This is based on my normal
> backup/restore method (which does NOT backup the entire OS). I backup OS
> settings, lists of packages, and data.

Thankfully I don't have to go through that pain right now.  The machine
is a P2 so no GPT.  I may eventually (within the year) swap this machine
out for one of the small NUCs at which point it'll be a fresh install
and then you're right, just data, package lists and settings will
migrate over.  But right now I just want the shortest down time without
a full reinstall.  I've got exim tweaked where I want it but it requires
breaking Debian's configuration system for exim (Debian's five billion
files and scripts just to reconfigure exim versus a little of my time
with vi on a single conf file).