uh ya i have a fedora core 3 system thats spread across three ide hdd's
there is one 2gb one 4gb and one 6gb and a cdrom currently on my ide controllers
i "had" norton ghost but it seems to be a little screwed up and won't boot
basically i'm wondering if first of all its possible to copy all three hard drives over to one 30gb hdd with no special programs like ghost, or would it be better if i just remove the cd drive, put the 30gb in and install fedora on it, then copy all my files from the 3 smaller drives
i just find it such a pain to remove all three drives and install the new one and then redownload all my files and reconfigure my system the way i want it and i have no blank cd's for burning atm so please if someone knows the best way to go about this i would appreciate the help. thanks!

there might be a way to do it in the shell but my opion i would re do it all and iinstall them to 30gig. now that i said what u didnt want to hear i say this due to less chance for something to go wrong and screw up everything and ull have to redo it anyway. but plz if someone knows a way in shell plz over ride my thoughts. sowwy

ya thats what i'm thinking too.. i'm just gonna wait til i get some discs to burn my data on first unless anyone knows a good beginners guide to nfs because if i could figure out how to network my two boxes i could just transfer everything right over and then wipe my drives, take em out and install the 30gb :/
i heard nfs is a whore to get configured but once its up its rock solid

to network start by getting a router than read as much u can on samba. i have 2 pcs on network but i dont file share i just print to same printer i never needed samba for that but to file share i hear thats the way to go.

well both boxes are linux and i thought samba was windows to linux and vice versa
i've used samba before for just such a purpose; accessing the windows network database at an older job.. and it was extremely flakey
i could open the remote directory and get whatever i want and then close the window and reopen it maybe 5 or 10min later and it would not let me connect just out of nowhere with no error messages and then wait another 5-10min and try again and it works
i heard nfs is the way to go so i wouldn't mind trying it but man pages are so convoluted and cryptic i need a good beginners guide :/

i might be wrong but i thought samba was from pc to pc weather it had windows or both linuxeither way you would have to connect to the pc without connecting to MSi llok it up.

from what im seeign your right it is made for MS files to be used on linux. im sorry i musta been thinking something else.

if you look at www.ubuntuguide.org they have a samba part and it doesnt say anything about windows. so its kinda hard to say what on web is right or wrong but if samaba is only for windows than there is something for linux to linux file sharing.

ya its called nfs i believe..

sum1else: Back to your original question, it should be trivial to copy your fc3 installation from the old drives to the new drive using either the fc3 rescue mode or using a Live-CD linux like Knoppix.

As a simple overview, you would start by creating the same number of partitions on the new drive for fc3 as you are currently using. Then you would mount each “old” and “new” partition pair and archival copy (“cp -a ...” or “rsync -a ...”) from the old to the new partition.

For example, if you mounted an old partition in /mnt/in and mounted the new partition in /mnt/out, then the rsync commands would look like this:

rsync -a --delete /mnt/in/ /mnt/out/

After you were finished, you would need to modify /boot/grub/grub.conf and /etc/fstab on the new disk to reflect the new locations. You would also need to reinstall grub, since it would not be present in the new MBR.

For more info about the commands needed, see:

man fdisk
man mke2fs # Likely usage: mke2fs -j /dev/hd...
man e2label # If you are using LABEL= ...in grub.conf or fstab
man mount
man umount
man cp
man rsync

You would save a lot of time reinstalling grub if you made a grub boot floppy from the fc3 system before you start the transfer process.

wow well thanks for the help lol i'm sure it may seem trivial to you but thats a lot of work there. i figure i'll try it out just for fun after i've burned all my data and if it works then thats cool and if not oh well

It’s easier than it looks.

The hardest things to do are probably learning (1) how to use fdisk, (2) how to make the ext3 filesystems (mke2fs -j /dev/hd...) in each new partition, (3) how to use vi from command line (if you use fc3 rescue) to edit grub.conf and fstab and (4) how to reinstall grub (see the grub manual here: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...l#Installation ). The man pages and Google are your friend.

Keep in mind that the old partitions can’t be mounted while you are copying them. So if you use fc3 rescue mode to do the copying, be sure to NOT search for or mount the fc installation.

Also, if you use rsync, be sure to make the copy in the correct direction, because “--delete” deletes anything on the destination that is not present on the source. You could just leave “--delete” out to be safe.

well i use vi all the time from command
as for fdisk.. is it anything like the fdisk for openbsd? cuz i got it to work when i followed the instructions but without them i was totally lost.. :/

When you start the fdisk shell (“fdisk /dev/hda”), you get a list (“m”) of command options that's easy to follow.

Just remember that once you have configured the partitions, you need to either write (“w”) the partition tables to the disk or quit (“q”) to abort the modifications.

Why not install all four drives and then boot into regular fc3 to do the partitioning and to make the filesystems before you go to fc3 rescue to do the copying?

Of course, you’ll need to take out at least one drive to hook up the CD player so that you can boot fc3 rescue from the CD. After you finish copying the first two drives, you can put the “missing” drive back in to complete the transfers.

hmm that doesnt sound too bad :/