[mythtv-users] OT: Best way to migrate to new hard drive?

[werpy at brookings.net]

> What's the best way to move my MythTV box from a dying hard drive to a
> new one?
> 
> Before you answer, understand I'm using LVM in this case for my
> recordings partition (everything else is currently ext3 on plain
> partitions). 
> 
> Symantec Ghost is an option up until LVM enters the picture. I've looked
> at Mondo Rescue (http://www.mondorescue.org/index.html),  PartImage
> (http://www.partimage.org/), and g4u (http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/).  
> 
> Mondo Rescue comes close because it supports LVM, but not in a
> disc-to-disc fashion.  It's more geared up for doing a rescue CD or up
> to the network.  G4u doesn't care about the filesystem, but it's mostly
> for moving from the same geometry, rather than resize, and in this
> process I'm putting in a larger drive. Partimage doesn't seem to mention
> much about LVM, so I'm a little confused there.
> 
> I may just remove the LVM partition entirely and recreate it.
> 
> I'm not a LVM guru. Fedora Core set it up nicely, and it allowed me to
> span to a second drive to get a really big store for Myth.  I was able
> to get that drive removed after archiving off some old recordings so
> this process could be simplified down to one drive.
> 
> I'm guessing some of you gurus in MythTV-users have done this sort of
> thing before?
> 
> - Steve
> 


Steve,

If you want to do it the hardcore linux way, you can use dd to copy your drive
over bit for bit.  Actually you don't need to to the whole drive (dd if=/dev/hda
of=/dev/hdb), as long as all of your partitions are of identical size you can
just dd partition by partition (dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdb1).  The only caveat
with partition copying is you have to copy the boot sector using dd as well,
hold on googling.... here it is (dd count=1 bs=512 if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb).

After all that your new disk should be a copy of your original disk and you
should be able to swap the new drive with the old one and boot into the
identical system.

Jason