[lug] Moving / partition to a new disk

[Elyse M. Grasso]

On Thursday 09 December 2004 11:16 pm, Michael Kahn wrote:
> I did this wrong once and it cost me hours to untangle the mess.
> I am hoping that by posting first, I'll avoid a repeat.
> 
> I wish to transfer an entire / directory structure from
> a partition on an old disk drive to a new partition on
> a new disk drive.
> 
> The first time around, I did a cp -R * and then promptly
> erased the old partition. **BIG MISTAKE** as cp -R is
> not faithful about owners/groups/symbolic links and all
> the other "small stuff" that made the new root partition
> useless.
> 
> So, what is the magical collection of command switches
> that would ensure that the copy into the new partition 
> creates a faithful copy of the old partition's file
> structure? Since the new partition size will be larger than
> the old partition, I am not seeking a sector-by-sector image
> type of copy.
> 
> Of course, this time around I won't be so quick to erase the 
> old partition until I am sure that the copy does the right thing.
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> Michael Kahn
> mkahn at fast-track.com
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I'm partial to 
find . -depth -print |cpio -pdumv <newlocation>

it's not fast, but it's thorough. You may need more params on the find if you 
need to handle symbolic links, and newlocation needs to exist. I believe 
there are ways to do this through tar, also, but this works for me. (I 
learned this incantation at AT&T in the late 80s, and their version of UNIX 
didn't have tar) 
-- 
Elyse Grasso

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