I have a rather unique configuration. I am running two separate hdd's. One for Mandriva (5 gig Seagate), and the other for Windows XP (40 gig WD). I have purchased a larger 1TB hard drive (Hitachi) to replace both of these. What I plan to do is, clone the Windows XP hard drive to the larger disk first. Then, I plan to do away with Mandriva 2008 entirely and install Mandriva 2009 instead, as a dual boot system. Can this operation be performed with a cloning program via Mandriva? I would like to boot to the Mandriva hdd and clone the (slave) Windows hdd. What program would be most recommended for this task?

EDIT: I forgot to mention that the current drives are IDE and the new 1TB Hitachi drive is SATA. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

The standard tool for cloning is dd.
If you search here at LQ or on Google, you will find tons of articles on this. Here is one of the classic tomes on the subject:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ighlight=learn

Unless you are experienced with dd, and disk partitioning, it may be safer to just reformat and reinstall everything.

Whatever you do, be sure your data is backed up.

An easier and newer approach is the aptley named Clonezilla. http://clonezilla.org/

I've read good reviews; but, not used it.

I´ve already used Clonezilla. But in my case I copied only a sata-sata or ide-ide hd and was very fast and easy!

OK........ Scratch the initial posting........ I've decided to simply purchase a larger hdd. So I did. I have now installed a Hitachi 1TB hard drive to better accomodate my growing collection of software. Now, I have a question all-together different. I'm running a dual boot between Windows XP and Mandriva Linux 2009. I now have an estimated 250gb Windoze partition, a 240gb Linux partition, a 10gb swap partition, and a 500 gig NTFS partition for backing up files for both OS's. These are estimates of course, but you get the idea. What I would "NOW" like to do, is, to perform incremental backups of both OS's and save them to the 500GB partition. This way, should I muck up an OS, I can restore it, preferably to an earlier date, and all is not lost. Can I do this using Clonezilla? Or would you now recommend a different approach?

Your best bet is to shrink those operating system partitions, they benchmark better when in smaller partitions near the start of a drive. If you're going to keep all data in a common data partition, you don't need 220GB of wasted space slowing down your OS when fragmentation occurs (Windows). And it would bring Mandriva in a faster end of the drive. Swap does not need to be that large since most desktop computer scenarios with heavy ram don't use it.
I operate a similar system with my shared data partition at the back (slower section) of the drive. Before it there are around 12 partitions, first one is the fastest, so I have a 2GB swap there as I use it often working on large files, then my work OS Debian...etc. etc.
Then I have free space before the data partition. This is great for setting up testing/waste operating systems, trying things without ruining the casual use copy of an operating system. Just make a quick partition, load a compressed image of the OS of choice and install that software you got off the internet that makes you weary. If it is malicious, take a few minutes to wipe out that partition and get a different copy of that software that's not infected...or whatever.
I use Bootitng, which I highly recommend.

If you want to make standard non compressed images of your 250GB partitions, you'll need another terabyte drive. You need imaging software/applications that don't include unallocated space and compresses your image. My Mandriva 2009 sits in a 10GB partition and it's image is 1.5GB, it's partition can be wiped and reloaded in 8 minutes, or a new partition created and loaded in 5 minutes. And using Bootitng, you can slap a copy of any of your operating systems anywhere on the drive if you decide to rearrange things some day or need to test something before implementing in your favorite installation.

You can do compressed images with dd and gzip, but you won't have the freedom to add copies or move around your operating systems as you'll probably be using traditional partitioning scheme.

Imagine for a second a system actually using 1GB of swap. It would be horrible to use such a system. Now imagine how clogged up it would be at 10GB! In reality, given the cost of memory, you don't need much more than 1GB of security blankey, err, swap space.

I'm mostly agreeing with JrH on the amount of disk devoted to each OS, as well. If you will get in the habit of getting your data off of your OS disk, you will be much happier. If you need the security blanket, then allocate 20GB to both OSes, and then sit and figure out where your data will actually be, and how much.

If what you really want to do is to put a bunch of movies on your big drive, then format most of it as NTFS, and put them there. There is an NTFS driver available for Linux, and it will happily watch your movies.

Do set aside a sizeable partition for Linux, though. You may find yourself moving more and more into the Linux world, and facing the issue of moving data, once again.

This is precisely what I intend to do. However, there is ONE particular program that I MUST use in Window$........ TurboTax!!!! It is not available in the Linux world as of yet..... :-( ...... or is it? I will take your advice on the partition sizes. I just thought these sizes would be a good starting point. I can always resize them. It's the "moving" them part that scares me. Currently, my Linux partition is sitting in the middle of the drive. The window$ partition is at the front of the drive. But your telling me I can change this.....correct? What is the name of the "NTFS driver available for Linux"? I really need that.

I dunno. I've sent my taxes out for the past few years, but this year I finally need to do them myself, again. My first effort will be to use it in wine. If that doesn't work, then I'll install it on the Windows I have setup in VirtualBox.

Speaking of VirtualBox, if you plan to decrease your windows usage, you might want to just install Windows under VirtualBox on whatever Linux you said you were using. It might not be as happy with Windows games as a *real* Windows install, but for everything else it's OK.

If you want to keep it at the front, keep it there. If you aren't absolutely sure you want to switch completely to Linux in the future, it might be best if it stayed there. It's easy enough to run fixmbr that way.

The fully working NTFS driver is "ntfs-3g", I think. I don't know what the current status is of the ntfs driver in the kernel.

VirtualBox? Sounds VERY VERY interesting to me. In a nutshell, will this allow me to run my Windows XP from within Mandriva Linux? If so, I gotta check that out! I do have Wine installed, but haven't had the chance to play around with it yet. I have an ATI video card holding me back right now..... :-( ..... Think you could help with that? God knows, I need all I can get!!....... LOL

Thanks for the mention. That's sorted out now!!! At least NOW I can view the contents of my NTFS partitions. That's great. Thank you!

I'm an Nvidia man, so I can't help you out with ATI. As to VB, just install it, start it up, and install Windows. Read the install instructions carefully, as you do need to generate a driver, and the instructions can be misleading. There's also the issue of your Windows registration code that you will have to deal with in some manner.

Thank you for the suggestions!!! As soon as I get this video card squared away, I'll surely look into this. It's likely that I'll continue to dual boot for a while though. I'm just comfortable with it. Thanks again!!