[CentOS] transfer data from one hard drive to another

Tue Oct 10 22:41:41 UTC 2006
Will McDonald <wmcdonald at gmail.com>

On 07/10/06, chrism at imntv.com <chrism at imntv.com> wrote:
> Interesting.  I wonder if you used this method to copy the image from
> one disk to an identical disk hda-->hdb if you could then unplug hda and
> have the system boot from the "copy" without any other intervention.
> Kind of like a poor man's RAID1 except you only get back to where you
> were at the instant the snapshot was taken.  I've never tried this since
> RAID cards are so cheap, but I guess I'm wondering out loud if that
> would work.  Anyone tried it?

Yep. I used do this all the time. If the disks have the same geometry
it's dead simple. I used to use it to build and configure a server
then duplicate it over another half-dozen or so identical systems.

You can also use the onboard RAID on most commercial vendor's
rackmount boxes to do this but, for example with HP, you need to pay
particular attention to the slots you're adding/removing disks from.
And, if you're looking at building *lots* of systems you're probably
better off with Kickstart and PXE in the long-run.

Will.