On Mon, Dec 03, 2001 at 05:03:43AM -0600, Cheryl Homiak wrote: > My problem is that my hard drive is failing and eventually it just isn't > going to start up, so I am hurrying to replace it. The old hard drive is > 2.5gig and the new hard drive will be much larger: 20gig. I don't have a > backup medium, though I have been able to tar my home directory and place > the tar package in my zipslack on my dos hard drive. However, we will also > be removing the dos hard drive as it is old and apparently not compatible > to be on the same ide with the newer hard drives, at least with my bios. if that is an issue, the new drive may also be incompatible with your bios, in which case you'll only be able to see the first 8 gig. > The plan is to have a dos partition on the sme hard drive as linux, though > if I could afford it I'd still rather have two separate hard drives. if you can afford the space, it's probably better to have both on a single drive; dos can't use more than 2 gig, and 2 drives are more overall risk than a single, and also linux has no problem with non-linux partitions. > I have been leaving my machine on because of the risk that I may never be > able to bring up my hard drive again if I turn it off' I've had to try and > try to get it to spin and start several times. The person putting my hard > drive in says there is some possibility he could put the new hard drive in > with the machine on so that I could transfer from one hard drive to > another, but we are concerned there could be dammage to my system or it > might just turn off during the process. My question is: is there some way > I can transfer my current linux system to the new hard drive, then take > the old hard drive out and put the new one where the old one was. Only I > assume I'd have to partition the hard drive first which would make thos > partitions hdb-- during the transfer. it's a bad idea to hot-plug ide drives (although i've done it a few times without problems). and if there's a stiction problem with the old drive, it's quite possible that hot-plugging would cause a power hiccup, which is even worse for a marginal drive. > I really am dragging my feet about re-installing from scratch because (1) > I'll have to use speakup instead of brltty as my rescue and root disk for > debian of course don't have brltty and I haven't worked on doing that yet; > (2) the speakup-enabled versions of debian are about two releases behind > the current potato release and I've been on woody, so I'll have a bunch of > upgrading to do; and (3) the last time I had to install completely my > ethernet couldn't be set up from the rescue and root disk and I had to use > ppp, but I've since removed my internal modem so I'll have to find a > friend to borrow an external modem from if I have to revert to ppp instead > of my nice fast dsl ethernet connection. put reinstalling at the end of your list as a last resort only. > If anybody can think of a way I can transfer my current system or can tell > me how I can get my ethernet up and working so I can use that to do the > package installs, I would appreciate it. when faced with a failing drive, my approach would be to get someone to lend a hand with another working system with a bunch of free space on it, and back the system up over ethernet. then, swap out the old disk, do a minimal install onto the new disk (leaving room for partitions from the old disk), and then ethernet the old disk contents back. the trick in all this is to watch your partition structure carefully, but this is how i upgrade hard drives (note: i am sighted). of course, if you can't another system, or you're unable to do a minimal install of the temporary "transfer" system, then i don't see a technical solution. if you can do these things, then figuring out your ethernet issues should be the best immediate plan. to start, what appears when you type: ifconfig eth0 -- Henry Yen Aegis Information Systems, Inc. Senior Systems Programmer Hicksville, New York