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Old 11-17-2007, 06:22 PM   #1
blainehilton
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Location: Portage, IN, USA
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Moving LVM partition to larger hard drive


I have an older system that has Fedora Core with the 2.6 kernel. When it was installed the default file system was the LVM. I had a 40GB IDE hard drive and it has filled up now and I have a 300GB IDE hard drive to replace it with.

The problem is I'm not sure how to make this happen. I have Acronis True Image on a Windows system so I took the hard drive out and did a full image backup first, then I tried doing a clone operation from it, but it will not allow me to resize the LVM partition. It will keep the LVM partition at 38GB and the /boot partition it will increase from 100MB to like 260GB, which of course is not what I want to do.

After spending some time Googling I have not been able to find a step by step how to that explains how to do the whole thing.

From my understanding I should hook up both drives to the Linux computer and make sure BIOS sees both of them, switch to single user mode and format the new drive with 2 partitions, and then copy the old data from the original drive to the new drive.

The more I read the more confused I get. The majority of what I have seen talks about how to upgrade a hard drive without LVM or about changing LVM settings, without a new physical drive.

Can someone please point me in the right direction?

I would also be interested in if there is even a basic utility program I could use. I read somewhere that hdclone.com would work, but I tried the basic free one and it doesn't mention anything about supporting resizing of LVM partitions.

Thanks in advance

BTW: I have tried using the SystemRescueCd and the partimage program, however after reading the FAQ at http://www.partimage.org/Partimage-F..._hard_disk_.3F I see that it does not support either resizing or going to a new unformated disk.

Last edited by blainehilton; 11-17-2007 at 07:21 PM.
 
Old 11-18-2007, 03:06 AM   #2
Simon Bridge
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the default file system was the LVM.
LVM is not a file system. It is a system for defining volime groups that may contain a file system. fedora's habit of doing this by default is a pain.

I have a 300GB IDE hard drive to replace it with.
Have you consideres simply adding the new drive to the existing volume?

What you need is an LVM tutorial.
http://librenix.com/?inode=798
http://www.linux-tutorial.info/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO
http://www.pma.caltech.edu/~laurence/Linux/lvm.html
http://derrick-caluag.blogspot.com/2...al-basics.html
 
Old 11-20-2007, 02:36 PM   #3
wmakowski
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Distribution: Fedora 25, 26, RHL 5.2
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Before giving you too many instructions I should ask, do you want to keep LVM or go back to a setup with standard partitions? Are you going to use the entire 300GB for this installation or break it up so you can play with other distributions? As Simon said, if you just need to add more space for the Fedora side of things you could simply create a new partition on the 300GB drive, create a physical volume (pvcreate) add it to the volume group (vgchange). The logical volume could then be resized (lvresize) and poof you're done. That is one of the key selling points of LVM.

Migrating from one hard drive to another can be done by booting with the install or rescue CD and typing linux rescue at the prompt. Be sure to have both hard drives installed before you boot. When rescue mode starts you'll be asked a few questions like language, keyboard, and if you want to use the network. The final part asks if you want to find any fedora installations on the hard drive. Skip this for now. I like migrating using this method because all partitions are unmounted and can be worked with relatively easily. You could also do it using a Live-CD, but you'll need to be sure it supports LVM. There are of course a lot more steps, but it would be best to know your ultimate goal first.

Bill
 
  


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