"i am such an idiot on command line stuff." "please excuse my ignorance" "i'm sure i know less than you" I'm not sure what, but something seems really out of place here for PLUG. Maybe there's something in the valley water supply? :) Happy New Year, -jmz On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 8:21 PM, Kurt Granroth wrote: > OR... maybe better yet, if you want to copy your entire hard drive onto > a bigger one, follow this step-by-step guide (with screenshots!) > > http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/doc/showcontent.php?topic=03_Disk_to_disk_clone > > On 12/30/09 8:13 PM, Kurt Granroth wrote: >> Your advice to use 'dd' was referring to something other than copying >> your home directory ;-) >> >> The 'dd' command is as low-level and hard-core as you typically can get. >>    It is used to make a *perfect* byte-by-byte copy of a file.  However, >> it's rarely used to make copies of "normal" files anymore.  Instead, >> it's used to make copies of "block" files.  That is, all hard drives and >> all partitions in the hard drives have a special pseudo file called >> /dev/something.  So if you want to make a perfect copy of an entire hard >> drive (including all file systems with their inodes and logs and >> everything), then you use 'dd'.  The normal 'cp' and the like can't get >> low-level enough to deal with things like that. >> >> ('dd', btw, stands for "Copy and Convert".  Supposedly it was initially >> shortened to 'cc' but since that was taken by the compiler, they used >> 'dd' instead.) >> >> If you want to copy a directory, your best bet is to use 'cp' or >> 'rsync'.  Why the choice?  Well, 'cp' is an old-school Unix utility and >> it was never built to fully handle directories.  The GNU version of 'cp' >> (which is what you are using) *can* handle directories and permissions >> and the like and so it'll work just fine... but people who have been >> around Unix long enough (and those who work on disparate Unix and >> Unix-like systems), tend to avoid counting on GNU cp since there's no >> guarantee that it'll be on any given system. >> >> 'rsync', on the other hand, is nearly ubiquitous and it works awesome >> for copying directories.  It is, by far, the most common tool used for >> copying or backing up entire directory structures. >> >> So you have a couple of choices to make. First, do you want to copy >> *everything* off of the old hard drive to a new one?  Or do you only >> want to copy off the home directory? >> >> In either case, I recommend using 'rsync'.  Thar be dragons when using >> 'dd' and it won't help you much in either case here. >> >> So.. >> >> 1. Mount your new USB drive and format it as ext3 or ext4.  You should >> be able to do that in a fairly GUI manner with any half-way modern Linux >> desktop. >> >> 2. Do you see where the USB drive is mounted?  I'll pretend it is >> /mnt/usb for this example.  Do the following if you are copying over >> just your home directory: >> >> $ rsync -azvH /home/stormy /mnt/usb/ >> >> If you are copying over your entire hard drive, then: >> >> $ sudo rsync -azvHx --exclude=/proc --exclude=/dev --exclude=/sys / >> /mnt/usb/ >> >> On 12/30/09 7:13 AM, betty wrote: >>> i'm sure i know less than you, the advice was to use dd. is one better >>> than the other?? i'm willing to use whatever will work to copy my home >>> dir to the new computer so that all my settings are the same. >>> >>> what would be the command for cp? >>> thx >>> betty i >>> >>> Eric Cope wrote: >>>> please excuse my ignorance, why would cp -r not work? >>>> Eric >>>> >>>> On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 9:33 PM, betty>>> >   wrote: >>>> >>>>       I installed the new drive into the new computer. I'm going to transfer >>>>       the home directory to a usb drive and then to the new computer. >>>>       This is the command i tried and the result i got. >>>> >>>>        stormy@stormy-desktop:~$ sudo dd if=/home/stormy of=/dev/sdc1 >>>>       bs=1024k >>>>       [sudo] password for stormy: >>>>       dd: reading `/home/stormy': Is a directory >>>>       0+0 records in >>>>       0+0 records out >>>>       0 bytes (0 B) copied, 0.000942499 s, 0.0 kB/s >>>>       stormy@stormy-desktop:~$ >>>> >>>>       What is wrong there? i am such an idiot on command line stuff. aghhh. >>>>       Thanks. >>>>       betty i. >>>> >>>>       Joseph Sinclair wrote: >>>>       >   First, I'd definitely recommend going with a new SATA drive on >>>>       the new machine.  You'll find everything just works better and the >>>>       added reliability of a newer drive makes for a lot less stress >>>>       (although regular and frequent backups are definitely the best >>>>       peace-of-mind tool). >>>>       > >>>>       >   For the data transfer there are 3 simple options: >>>>       >   1) If you have, or can borrow, a large enough USB drive (flash >>>>       or HDD), I'd copy everything (I prefer rsync, but dd is a good >>>>       choice too) to the USB drive, then copy from that to the new computer. >>>>       >   2) Temporarily install the old drive in the new machine on the >>>>       ATA (CDROM) interface (if the new machine has an old-style ATA >>>>       interface for the CD drives), and copy the data from one drive to >>>>       the other (definitely use rsync here). >>>>       >   3) Connect the two machines to an ethernet router/hub and use >>>>       rsync to transfer the files over the ethernet connection. >>>>       > >>>>       >   However you end up doing the transfer, I'd definitely recommend >>>>       retaining a separate backup of all of your personal data >>>>       (pictures, documents, music, videos, etc...) as part of the >>>>       process, if at all possible. >>>>       > >>>>       -- >>>>       betty i. >>>>       www.webcanine.com >>>>       information for people >>>>       who care for dogs. >>>> >>>>       --------------------------------------------------- >>>>       PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us >>>>       >>>>       To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >>>>       http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> Eric Cope >>>> http://cope-et-al.com >>> >>> >> >> --------------------------------------------------- >> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us >> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss