Properly copying partitions...

[Bradmont2]

I'm considdering a switch to reiser, and was wondering what the process is for properly copying partitions... will cp -a do the trick?

[demian]

cp -a should work. I usually use
tar Scpf - /path/to/source | (cd /path/to/target ; tar xvSpf - )
Maybe because it looks more crytic, maybe cause it feels better, maybe cause it never messed with my permissions and ownerships the way cp once did...

[Bradmont2]

I tried cp -ax, but for copying my root partition, it also tries to copy all the partitions mounted under root... Is there a way to get it to just copy the one partition without unmounting everything?

[Bradmont2]

For future referrence, here's what I did:

First, I used dd to make an image of my root partition, which I then mounted as a loopback device and coppied everything from to the new partition.