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). > > I was thinking of copying the old root partition with > sudo cp -a -P /* /mnt/hd > (after mounting the prospective new root partition). > Then I'd have to modify the new /etc/fstab . > > Is that a sensible approach? Probably not. Do you have a separate /boot file system? The default CentOS installer generally creates a separate /boot file system and puts everything else on a LVM volume group (and carves two logical volumes from that: one for swap and one for /). 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/ -- 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/