[CS-FSLUG] Linux Drive Cloning

[Tim Young]

  Hi there,
Here is a list of different tools:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disk_cloning_software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_disk_cloning_software


Partimage, PING,  and clonezilla will allow you to resize partitions 
during the copy.

Doing dd does not allow you to resize partitions, though you can use 
other tools to do that later on.

I have done the tar or rsync between the two drives a number of 
times, and it is certainly a good exercise.  You need to get the 
bootloader on the new drive, which is the more complex part.  Grub 
has the tools built into it to do it, so it is not all that 
complex.   But if you want to migrate from a smaller disk to a 
larger, I think partimage is the one to use.  It has been a while 
since I have used it.

     - Tim Young

On 7/26/2010 12:08 AM, Timothy Butler wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 	I'm wondering if anyone could offer some advice on cloning a disk? I want to take a 250 GB ext3 hard disk full of data (and the Linux system and boot files, too) and clone its data onto a 500 GB disk. I've done this on the Mac in Disk Utility, and if I tell it to put the contents of a certain partition onto a larger partition, that works just fine.
>
> 	Would the same be true in Linux? Any pointers?
>
> 	Typically, I've done a fresh install when moving a Linux install to a different drive. I guess I could copy the partitions to the new drive while keeping them the exact same size and then resize them afterwards, but that sounds less efficient.
>
> 	Thoughts?
>
> 	Thanks,
> 		Tim
>
>
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