switching hard drives

[mandreko]

i have a linux server, which is using a 27.2 GB hard drive, but i want to use that on my personal computer... i have a 5 GB hard drive that i'd like to use to replace it with... but i REALLY don't want to format, and reinstall... is there a way to copy everything over the the new hard drive, and then use that hard drive to boot off of?

[foppa]

I don't know if there's a free/open source way to do it, but I've had good luck doing that kind of thing with Norton Ghost.

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"Two rules to success in life:
1. Don't tell people everything that you know."
--Sassan Tat

[FoBoT]

yes an image program like ghost, imagecast, drive image pro etc makes an exact copy of your drive/partition and puts it into a file (network drive or cdr)

we use imagecast at work for doing winders images, i will try it on my new debian box on monday and see if it work just as well with linux

[cs25x]

mke2fs on your new baby.
Then mount it some place and use mc.
Then if you are brave,
switch on another console and use mc.
You should get good r/w overlap.

The other thing you could do is dd and wait for the error when you hit the end of your 5G, you would have to hope that you have the data packed in the first 5G of the 27 drive, and there is a good possibility that it will fail on that score. But it could be worth a try.

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