[mythtv-users] Harddrive downgrade...

[John Drescher]

On Dec 11, 2007 10:59 AM, Andrew Close <aclose at gmail.com> wrote:
> hey all,
>
> the KnoppMyth Wiki has instructions on how to do a harddrive upgrade
> (http://www.knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=HardDriveUpgrade) that
> look very straightforward.  i'm sure there are other sources of easy
> instructions, but that was the first place i looked.
>
> anyway, the instructions assume you are 'upgrading' to a harddrive of
> equal or greater size.  i would like to downgrade my existing drive
> (300GB, or is it 300GiB? :) to a 200GB drive that just contains all
> partitions minus the /myth/tv partition.  i'd like to use the 300GB
> drive exclusively for /myth/tv.  my understanding of the 'dd' command
> is that it does a bit for bit copy, so if i have more bits on one
> drive than can fit on the other i may run into problems.  is there a
> quick and easy way to migrate everything to the 200GB drive and then
> expand the /myth/tv partition on the 300GB drive to encompass the
> whole drive?  or some similar solution?  i guess the key is quick,
> since this is my production system and i don't have another box to
> play with.
>

I would not use dd for that. Use fdisk to partition the drive then use
rsync or cp to copy the data. Remember to use the -x option to limit
the copy to one filesystem so it does not try to copy /proc, /sys or
/dev and in the case of cp the -p option. Also you may want to use the
exclude options to have it not copy temp files.

John