Ghosting versus fresh install

thekid · 09-14-2007, 04:02 PM

I'm going to be upgrading soon, and I'm going to a new 320GB SATA drive from a 250GB IDE. What would be ther preferential choice, ghosting or a fresh install?

Bruce Hill · 09-15-2007, 02:14 AM

Who's choice? Mine is always a fresh install. Don't forget to backup, especially your config files.

perry · 09-15-2007, 12:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thekid

I'm going to be upgrading soon, and I'm going to a new 320GB SATA drive from a 250GB IDE. What would be ther preferential choice, ghosting or a fresh install?

"I ain't afraid of no ghost!"

- me

H_TeXMeX_H · 09-15-2007, 12:44 PM

I usually go for fresh install as well, cuz I always forget to update things when I upgrade. And, if I don't forget to update things, I constantly worry ... did I forget to update something ... ?

thekid · 09-15-2007, 02:13 PM

I was thinking I could just make an image of the current install, then put that on the new 320GB sata drive, but I'm not sure what kind of problems I may run into because it's going to be a completely new system with new MoBo and CPU. I was also thinking about JFS instead of what I have which is:

Code:

/dev/hdc3        swap             swap        defaults         0   0
/dev/hdc1        /                ext3        defaults         1   1
/dev/hdc2        /usr/local       reiserfs    defaults         1   2
/dev/hdc4        /home            reiserfs    defaults         1   2

H_TeXMeX_H · 09-15-2007, 02:32 PM

If you're running a stock kernel, preferably one with many things compiled in then you can probably do it. However, if you made a custom kernel ... then it is less likely to work. Again, if it's not too much trouble, re-install is preferable, especially when changing systems, and even more so for systems that differ greatly. Why not, back everything up, try ghosting, then if it fails, wipe it and re-install. Either way you have to back things up.

P.S. I just read your sig. ... that's a very nice quote comparison

, I wonder if Bill came up with the M$ ad, or was it Himmler, I mean Ballmer...

perry · 09-15-2007, 02:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thekid

I was thinking I could just make an image of the current install, then put that on the new 320GB sata drive, but I'm not sure what kind of problems I may run into because it's going to be a completely new system with new MoBo and CPU. I was also thinking about JFS instead of what I have which is:

Code:

/dev/hdc3        swap             swap        defaults         0   0
/dev/hdc1        /                ext3        defaults         1   1
/dev/hdc2        /usr/local       reiserfs    defaults         1   2
/dev/hdc4        /home            reiserfs    defaults         1   2

I wouldn't use JFS... tried it recently and it acted very unreliable. Go reiserfs or ext3, never had any problems with them myself.

- Perry

Alien Bob · 09-15-2007, 02:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by perry

I wouldn't use JFS... tried it recently and it acted very unreliable. Go reiserfs or ext3, never had any problems with them myself.

Tried it recently? For how long? And what were your problems with it's 'unreliability'?
I can tell you that JFS is as reliable as ext3 and much faster. I would not let reiserfs touch my hard disk however.

Eric

H_TeXMeX_H · 09-15-2007, 02:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by perry

I wouldn't use JFS... tried it recently and it acted very unreliable. Go reiserfs or ext3, never had any problems with them myself.

- Perry

JFS ... unreliable ??? Well I've been running it for quite some time now on many different machines and it works great, in fact it works far better than other filesystems I've tried. As for reliability, there aren't too many filesystems that are unreliable, and JFS is certainly not one of them. XFS is also a good choice. In fact, take a look at this notice from mythtv:

Quote:

Filesystems

MythTV creates large files, many in excess of 4GB. You must use a 64 or 128 bit filesystem. These will allow you to create large files. Filesystems known to have problems with large files are FAT (all versions), and ReiserFS (versions 3 and 4). The ext3 filesystem can be made to work but requires great care in how you format and mount the volume.

Because MythTV creates very large files, a filesystem that does well at deleting large files is important. Numerous benchmarks show that XFS and JFS do very well at this task. You are strongly encouraged to consider one of these for your MythTV filesystem. JFS is the absolute best at deletion, so you may want to try it if XFS gives you problems. MythTV .20 and above also incorporates a "slow delete" feature, which progressively shrinks the file rather than attempting to delete it all at once, so if you're more comfortable with a filesystem such as ext3 (whose delete performance for large files isn't that good) you may use it rather than one of the known-good high-performance file systems. There are other ramifications to using XFS and JFS - neither offer the opportunity to shrink a filesystem; they may only be expanded.

NOTE: You must not use ReiserFS v3 for your recordings. You will get corrupted recordings if you do.

Because of the size of the MythTV files, it may be useful to plan for future expansion right from the beginning. If your case and power supply have the capacity for additional hard drives, read through the LVM and Advanced Partition Formatting sections for some pointers.

http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.1

I happen to handle large files regularly ... movie captures and such, and I've found, much like this notice says, that ext3 is somewhat on the inadequate side. I can vouch for the fact that XFS and JFS are the way to go when handling large files and when embarking on a project such as MythTV ...

And this filesystem benchmark also helps my point:
http://linuxgazette.net/122/piszcz.html

Now, do tell me, why do you say JFS is unreliable ? I mean, what happened to make you think this ? Did it fail you in some way ? Could you be more specific ?

perry · 09-16-2007, 11:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alien Bob

Tried it recently? For how long? And what were your problems with it's 'unreliability'?
I can tell you that JFS is as reliable as ext3 and much faster. I would not let reiserfs touch my hard disk however.

Eric

perhaps it was just the situation that i used it. i had a 1 gig partition setup on /dev/hda10 for for curiosity set it as jfs. i then mounted it and did a ls, the first time i did it, i got a listing, the second time there was no listing. i checked to see if it was mounted, it was, i remounted it, did a ls, got a listing, thought i was seeing things, did a 2nd ls, no listing...

now doing a sector-by-sector overwrite on it beforehand while using the make_disk.sh utility might have had something to do with it not working reliably, i'm not sure...

sounds crazy, but thats my experience, so i'm not going to argue with you if you've had no problems with it. just that i should have gotten some sort of diagnostic telling me that the filesystem had changed.

just being honest, i don't mind admitting to mistakes if it's in the interest of common good...

cheers

- perry

thekid · 09-25-2007, 12:25 PM

Got the new system up and running and right out of the gate JFS seems more responsive. Doesn't take anytime at all to replay the journal entries on bootup. I slaved the 250GB PATA drive, using it as a media drive and it takes slightly longer on the journal replay than the JFS, though that could just be due to the JFS being on a SATA drive.