[CentOS] Transferring system to new drive

Robert Heller heller at deepsoft.com
Tue Sep 14 13:53:42 UTC 2010


At Tue, 14 Sep 2010 09:39:07 -0400 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:

> 
> On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 09:03:13AM -0400, Robert Heller wrote:
> > At Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:12:46 +0100 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:
> > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Is there a document with instructions for this?
> > > I've had smartd warnings that a hard disk in my server is sick,
> > > so I am installing a new drive (in addition to the old).
> > > 
> > 
> > Here is an article I wrote about doing this:
> > 
> > http://www.deepsoft.com/2009/01/how-to-transfer-a-linux-system-from-one-disk-to-another/
> > 
> As someone who came from FreeBSD, dump restore was always considered
> best there.  Hoewver, I've heard (though not deeply investigated), that
> due to various things in the Linux kernel, dump restore isn't the best
> approach for Linux, and there will be metadata loss.  DISCLAIMER--this
> isn't something I've really looked into, however last time I was going
> to do it, I saw enoughw warnings about it to make me look for another
> method.  If Robert has been doing it successfully, then, chances are
> he's right.  (Perhaps these changes in the Linux kernel are newer than
> the CentOS kernel.)

I've used dump & restore so many times over the years with Linux
systems to believe there is nothing wrong with using dump & restore. 
Note: dump & restore are only for ext2/ext3.  It does not work for
riserfs, xfs, etc. I don't know about ext4 (and the problems you've
heard about might be related to ext4 or something else).

> 

-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933
Deepwoods Software        -- Download the Model Railroad System
http://www.deepsoft.com/  -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows
heller at deepsoft.com       -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/
                              



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