Can I move my linux installation to another Hard Drive?
 

I am dual booting Fedora Core 1 with Windows XP. I allocated 4GB to the Linux partition (I had very little free space) and have now run out of space :( Is it possible to move my Linux installation to an entirely new hard drive if I get one? If so, how would I go abut doing this?

As an alternative, is it possible to resize my Linux partition to take space from another partition? I could allocate to it another 2GB until I get a new HD. Could I resize it with Partition Magic in Windows for example? Or is there perhaps an equivalent program available for linux?

I need the quickest solution to keep working right now. Have a project working on for school that is being out on hold until I get more space on the partition.

Take a look at www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/ .

Hi

You cold try

dd if=/"yourlinux partition or drive" of=/dev/hdb(new hard drive)

i dunno if you would have to unmount the linux partition first but generally dd should work also do a man dd first to discover more options.

This would be the easiest way i think
also when the copy has been completed you will have to update whatever boot loader that you are using.

cheers

The story on Partition Magic (now owned by Symantec) is that it can be used to "create, resize, move, copy, and label partitions." My cousin wasn't too crazy about it, however it seems to be pretty popular. Take a look at the website and see if it's what you might want:

http://www.symantec.com/partitionmagic/


:Pengy:


Very best,
Nick

I think you have to do new installation on new harddrive, however to make space on your old hard drive do uninstall remove the extra package.

thanks

no, you don't have to do a new install on a new hard drive.

since you want a bigger partition, you should make whatever partitions you want on the new drive, then use tar to copy the stuff over.
use the boot cdrom from you linux distro. mount your linux distribution where you wish, and the partition you are going to copy the stuff to.
cd to old partition
tar clfvp - . |(cd /newpartition; tar xvpf - --same-owner)
that will copy everything.
then update your boot loader, and /etc/fstab to make it match the new configuration.

Thanks for all the suggestions! After posting my original question I went and tried to remove packages I thought I would not need. However, I got errors to the effect that I needed to install some packages before I could remove them! I think it was just trying to remove packages that were not there. But that was still annoying and needs some work!

Anyways, I just decided to do a reinstall on the same partition, but with a smaller set of packages specific to what I am doing. I want to do some work to present in the morning so I need to get up and going again. I wont lose much really. Most of my time since installing Core 1 has been spent playing arouund with the kenel and upgrading :) I might as well start afresh and do what I originally set out to do: my assignment that has nothing to do with kernel recompiling :D