I need to ghost or mirror my linux (ubuntu) to different hard drive.

[dalearyous]

i am running ubuntu on my linux box which hosts my web server. however, i need to ghost or mirror it onto a bigger hard drive. whats the easiest way to do this? if it was windows, i would just use acronis.

 

[Nothinman]

What version of Acronis do you have? What distro? Did you use LVM or not? Apparently some of them support various Linux filesystems. It also looks like it has some support for LVM in some releases but I'd be leery of trusting that myself.

 

[sourceninja]

honestly if I was moving to a bigger hard drive, I would put it in the computer, fdisk it to make partitions, format said partitions, mount the partitions, copy over the data, install grub, power down, remove original drive, power on.

Otherwise you are going to clone, then screw around with partition resizing utilities that may or may not work (they most likely will, but still)

 

[Fox5]

Best way is probably just to copy the data over and reinstall if necessary. However, there's a free cd called Clonezilla that should do it too. I'd imagine some acronis product can also do it.

 

[crazychicken]

I would use Norton Ghost - it shouldn't care about what type the partitions are.

Dave

 

[Red Squirrel]

The quick and dirty option is also dd, but you will be producing a file the size of your entire partition. I'm thinking of doing this myself as I have been unsuccessful at imaging my OS drive with Acronis. Won't pick up the drive.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
The quick and dirty option is also dd, but you will be producing a file the size of your entire partition. I'm thinking of doing this myself as I have been unsuccessful at imaging my OS drive with Acronis. Won't pick up the drive.

I think a DD copy will only work with a drive of the exact same make and size. Just use clonezilla, it's pretty up to date and just uses a few of the built in linux tools.

 

[degibson]

Originally posted by: Fox5

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
The quick and dirty option is also dd, but you will be producing a file the size of your entire partition. I'm thinking of doing this myself as I have been unsuccessful at imaging my OS drive with Acronis. Won't pick up the drive.

I think a DD copy will only work with a drive of the exact same make and size. Just use clonezilla, it's pretty up to date and just uses a few of the built in linux tools.

It'll work with a partition of the same size. You don't need to take the entire drive if you don't want to. Usually when I use dd for this purpose I only grab partitions at a time.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Fox5

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
The quick and dirty option is also dd, but you will be producing a file the size of your entire partition. I'm thinking of doing this myself as I have been unsuccessful at imaging my OS drive with Acronis. Won't pick up the drive.

I think a DD copy will only work with a drive of the exact same make and size. Just use clonezilla, it's pretty up to date and just uses a few of the built in linux tools.

You can use dd but the partitions will not be expanded to fill the drive. It will also transfer every single byte of free space, because dd doesn't distinguish between bits that are part of a file and bits that are just empty bits on the drive.

Anyway, I would strongly suggest using Clonezilla. I use it all the time to make backup images of servers. It is just as good and easy to use as Ghost, and it works with every single NIC supported by Linux (for remote images) and every single SCSI and SATA controller supported by Linux.