Dear Friend

Can anyone please explain me how can I add a new HDD to my system and make a clone of my old hdd in new.

Thanks

google g4u

If they're identical, you can use dd (maybe run it off a live-cd so you don't have to mount the disks). There's a great thread here at LQ about dd, so you maybe want to read it, but the short usage is
Where you'll change the parameters when necessary - hda would be primary IDE disk, hdb secondary, but they might nowadays be called sda and sdb, so check it out. Also don't make that the wrong way, or it'll write the older drive empty

More options and help at:
Or you could use a cloning software like Nortong Ghost, but whatever you like..if the disks aren't equal in size (for example the new disk is bigger), you need to do something else, because dd doesn't (at least "by default") expand the filesystem over the whole disk, it merely makes an image and copies it to the other disk, exactly the same as the source is.

If there is any need to format or making partition in the new installed drive.

If you use dd or other software that will clone the drive, i.e. make an image of it and then put the image onto the other disk, no. The image contains filesystems etc. too, so then you don't have to. If you want to, you can partition and format it and install a new OS yourself and then copy just files off the original disk, but cloning makes what it says - clones everything.

EDIT: you'll notice this also from (for example) what dd uses as source and destination: device file for the entire disk (hda and hdb). It doesn't ask for partitions if you're dd'ing the whole disk (partitions like hda1, hda2, hdb1, ...), nor ask you anything about the filesystems - simply which device (whole disk in this case) you want to read from, and which device to write to.

Take a look at Partimage to clone a hdd.

Thanks to you all

Cloning had done but after removing old hdd and installed new linix was not booting its shows error

setuproot : error mounting/proc: not a directory

You may need to make changes to your /etc/fstab file.

If you clone a drive, and the drives have different geometry, you will have an incorrect partition table in the MBR. This can cause boot problems. I use partimage to save and restore partitions, and fdisk to partition drives. After you setup the partitions on a new drive, you will still need to install a boot loader. Look at the man page for grub-install. Typical usage is to mount the restored boot partition and run something like this:

# grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/system /dev/sda

If the hard disk is properly cloned there would be no need to change anything. dd cannot make anything other than 100% miiror of the original.

Thus the original should be removed and the cloned disk takes up its place. Once working properly the old disk may be hooked back as a different drive if it is a Linux.

More details is here.

Does the HD onto which you dd the clone have to be of the same size as the original ?

ie Cloning hda onto hdb, hda is 20Gb and hdb is 40Gb,

If the hds do not have to be of the same size could you just specify the cloned HD to be saved as a file and still keep the remaining 20GB on hdb for other file sharing purposes.

eg. would below be valid.
Thanks,
Uncle

About your latest exemple, I understand the following: to write a file in a partition (hdb1 in this case), this partition must *already* exist. So, this would be just something like an image of the original disk. Nevertheless, which filesystem in hdb1 would permit a 20GB long file?

Oh ! Thanks masterclass. I forgot that dd would copy the entire hd and not ONLY just the "system + files." Meaning that if my OS and all the associated files took up say 2Gb out of the 20Gb on the HD, dd would copy the 2Gb along with the "empty" remaining 18Gb. So

would not be viable as no f/s allows for such big files.

Thanks again

uncle

Exactly. However if the drives are not identical (Same manufacturer, same drive size, and same number of cylinders), an identical copy will not work, due to having different numbers of cylinders.