Danny Sauer 21:03 2005-12-30:
>The dd command will get you an exact copy of the old drive.  You'll
>then need to resize the partitions.  If you have a rescue disk with
>qtparted (http://www.sysresccd.org/), or if you otherwise have that on
>your system, you can then use that program to move the partitions
>around on the new drive.  That way, if something screws up on the new
>drive, you can pretty easily start over from the old one again.

That CD is marvellous! :)
I used it for changing to larger and faster drive on my laptop, while keeeping the filesystems intact.  (It can also copy/restore MBR by the way).

The CD can use ethernet LAN, and Samba to talk to MSWin shares, so I booted on it, connected LAN, and dd the disk data to *this* old MSWin computer, changed drive, booted on CD angain, and dd back the filesystem on the laptop.  DONE.

(Basically.  There are also tricks to minimize the size of the data such as first defragmenting the filesystem and pach files at beginning, then shrink the partition.  Or fill up unused space with a large file conatining zeroes som compression on the dd data is efficient.  I do not remember the details.)

As dd copies bit by bit regardless of file system compatibility is a non-issue, as long as the new drive is equal or larger then the original.

There is a great manual with the CD.

/Morgan

--
Morgan Olsson, Kivik, Sweden

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