How to Move Linux to Other Hard Drive

There are several methods to move Linux to another hard disk on the same server.
But I used Unix dump / restore utility to do this

[caption id="attachment_381" align="aligncenter" width="242" caption="Moving linux"][/caption]

 

Step1. First you need a new hard disk partition in the same way as with previous unit (Linux is running on). I usually use the utility ‘fdisk‘.
Let us suppose that the old drive is /dev/sda and a new one is /dev/sdb.
To view the partition table hda please run ‘fdisk-l  /dev/ sda “which should show something like this:

root@deb:~# fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0007384e

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        9330    74936320   83  Linux
/dev/sda2            9330        9730     3212289    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            9330        9730     3212288   82  Linux swap

Step2. After this run ‘fdisk /dev/sdb’ and make the same partitions at it. Interactive mode of fdisk utility is well documented and is very intuitive, so I don’t think it would be difficult to perform partitioning.

After this is done, we should make new filesystems at partitions we’ve created:

mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sdb1
mkswap /dev/sdb2

Step3. Now new hard drive preparation is finished and we can proceed with moving Linux to it. Mount new filesystem and change directory to it:

mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/hdb1
cd /mnt/hdb1

Step4.  Perform moving by command:

dump -0uan -f – / | restore -r -f

When dump/restore procedures are done we should install boot loader to new HDD. Run ‘grub’ utility and execute in it’s console:

root (hd1, 0)
setup (hd1)
quit

Enjoy.