I have a Sony Vaio laptop that does not have an hda, it died a while ago, but I was able to install openSuSE 10.2 on an external usb drive. Works well and things are going nicely. Only problem is, I want to get another drive for the laptop, and with everything configured how I want it for the most part, how can I move everything to the new /dev/hda and have it boot without a kernel panic because it does not know where /dev/sdb is?

Thanks people

Boot a liveCD, "cp -a /dev/current/* /dev/new", re-install bootloader to new MBR, fix /etc/fstab.

Reboot.
Pray.

Anything that doesn't work can be fixed from the liveCD in need.

1. Copy all data to your hard drive (using a live CD). Make sure you have partitioned the same way as on your USB stick
2. On the hard drive, modify following files and replace sdb with wathever your hard disk is:

For the boot loader part, you will need to tell from which HD/partition to boot, usually using numbers like (0,0). Please use google to learn more about it, it's well documented.

Finally, don't forget to install the appropriate boot loader.

Edit: better install the boot loader first, then check if the file was modified correctly. The others will still have to be edited.