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

[Javier Vasquez]

On 1/27/12, atilla ontas <tarakbumba at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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...
>

I've migrated from old PC to new one, with several partitions, through
"cp -a", more than once (even when HW doesn't match):

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Disk_Cloning#Using_cp

The trick is being able to use an external HDD usb-2 case...

I'm happy with results, :-)

-- 
Javier.