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