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

[atilla ontas]

2012/1/27 C Anthony Risinger <anthony at xtfx.me>:
> 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

I have migrate to a new HD a week ago. I have combined 1 hd (Windows
with two partitions) and 2nd hd (Archlinux with two partitions) into 1
hd. I failed with dd, as windows created many problems (boot failures,
wrong partition sizes etc.). I have solved my problems with
fsarchiver. Booted into a livecd, used fsarchiver to create harddisk
images. Then restored images on new harddisk. It is really easy, but
you'll need a large space to record hd images. Fsarhiver creates hard
disk images without empty bytes.

My 2 cents...