[arch-general] New PC and data copying -- am I doing this right?

[C Anthony Risinger]

On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 12:59 PM, Thanasis Georgiou <sakisds.s at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 27 January 2012 20:37, Kwpolska <kwpolska at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I bought a new PC.  I'm going to get it a bit later, I need a plan for
>> data movement.  I created this, can someone please tell me if it's
>> okay, and, if it's not, what should I change?
>>
>> 01. Remove the OLDPC drivers from Arch on OLDHDD.
>> 02. Connect the NEWHDD to the OLDPC.
>> 03. Create the appropriate partitions on the NEWHDD (with new sizes,
>>    EXCEPT Shared [NTFS])
>> 04. Copy (dd) some partitions from OLDHDD to NEWHDD (Arch, Home,
>>    Shared)
>
> Maybe you shouldn't dd them. If you dd, you will copy every single
> byte from the old partition. Maybe you can save (a lot) of time if you
> just rsync/cp them.

yes i would not even touch dd at all ... it will take much longer
because IIRC it will copy zeros, and each fs will need to be
resized/etc.

i would:


1) install the NEWHD
2) boot a livecd
3) partition to your liking (with NTFS being partition 1)
4) format each partition with the FS you want, including NTFS
5) mount all partitions from NEWHD
6) mount all partitions from OLDHD
7) rsync -avxHAXS /OLDHD/{partition}/ /NEWHD/{partition}/
8) goto 7

be sure to add the trailing slash rsync paths.  personally i would
drop the `-v` verbose flag because the terminal driver will slow the
transfer ... i don't know how to get rsync to simply say "hey, i've
done X work so far" without spewing massive amounts of data to the
terminal.

the only probalem would be windows, if NTFS has some kind of internal
UUID, and it notices/cares (and windows *always* cares ;-)

... in which case i would suggest reactivating or hacking windows. you
bought it. you own it. it's yours.

-- 

C Anthony