I just got a nice new HD, much bigger and faster than what I have now. Alas, I just got my RH 8.0 all tweaked out and pimped up just the way I like it. I really don't want to have to reinstall and do everything again...

So is there a way I can just copy the existing istallation onto the new disk, just make exactly the same partitions (but this time it will be on /dev/hda) and somehow copy everything, and then just reinstall grub to reflect the changes?

If this is possible at all, could someone walk me through it, I am not a total noob but I am no guru either, so it is very possible that I may get stuck along the way. But I would really like to this instead of installing again, and then going through the whole process of getting it to be how I want it to be...

Thanks a mil guys,
Cheers!!

You might have a problem with copying a system in use due to lock files and many other things I'm not aware of.

this is a little tricky so follow me on this... it works... this is how I've set up a couple of LFS systems...
plug the hd into your ide bus (preferably primary ide bus and set as slave)... then you can cfdisk or fdisk /dev/hdb to create your partitions. If you want the partitions just like the old system then type 'cat /etc/fstab'... this will tell you what partitions get mounted where... to see partition filesizes use 'cfdisk /dev/hda'... this will allow you to view the old hd's partition setup.

once you have the new hd partitioned you now have to format the partitions... use mkfs to format the different partitions.

download a distro of linux that you can boot and run from CD to copy all the files from one hd to another.

now running linux from a CD (that way the system isn't using any files on either of the HDs)... do something like the following:

# mkdir /mnt/oldhd
# mkdir /mnt/newhd

# mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/oldhd /* or whatever your old root partition is */
# mount /dev/hdb1 /mnt/newhd /* or whatever your new root partition is going to be */
# cd /mnt/newhd
#mkdir usr root home mnt lib etc bin sbin ... etc
next you will have to mount the remaining partitions on both the new and old hds to their appropriate mount points (see /etc/fstab).

then you can just copy files recursively from one hd to another... update your grub (not sure how to do this myself... I'm a lilo guy) then shutdown, switch the new hd in for the old one and reboot. Should be good to go.

I know that's really not going into detail but that's how you do it... let me know if / where you need more clarification.

guys thanks for such quick replies, but it looks like its more trouble than its worth, i don't have broadband or anything, so downloading knoppix would be a pain, so it looks like I'll just nuke it and start over....

thanks tho!!!

Don't have to use knoppix. Just boot the RH 8 1st install CD and use the rescue mode. No gui so its all console commands.

If you copy to the same partitions then all you have to do is run grub-install to reinstall grub to your new disk. You will have to chroot to the new HDD first.

Just use the cp command to move your install to the new drive.
See this page to see how I did it.