Hi,

Just got a quick question in regards to cloning my slackware 14.1 install from a HDD to SSD

I've got a 64gb SSD as i've replaced the boot drive in my main (windows 7, don't hurt me!) machine with a larger one, so I'm wanting to put the 64gb in my HP Microserver as its boot/program drive. When i installed slackware in the first instance, i wasn't paying attention to the installer, as it's a little server i've got a few drives in there. I thought it was installing to the 250gb drive that i was using for it's boot/program drive with Arch, which is SDA, but it actually installed it on a 250gb partition on another drive, which is SDC1.

I'm thinking it would be best to connect up the SSD, use dd to clone the boot/program partition to it. It's about 15gb at the moment, so i'm not sure if i can use dd to clone it as i'm not sure if dd will try and clone the entire 250gb, or just what is used. I've had a search but i can't seem to see a better solution, really.

Also, once i've cloned it, can i just edit the /etc/fstab and lilo.conf to point it to SDA, after i've used cfdisk to mark it as bootable? i've not used UUID or anything like that for the drive names, so i'm hoping i can just edit the relevant files, rerun lilo to confirm the changes and i'd be all set, but again, not sure.

I've also got the /home directory currently on the boot/program drive. What i want to do once i've cloned the install is to have the /home directory on the partition i've just cloned from. If i boot up without doing this, and it works, can i reformat the partition, copy over the files from the current /home directory onto the partition, edit /etc/fstab to mount the /home directory on the partition and reboot, would that be enough to sort this, or am i missing anything out?

I have just changed my main drive again the way i usually go is to install the new drive boot from the install cd or live usb/cd if i have one around, if the drive i am copying from is full i just use dd onto the new drive then adjust the partion to match the new disk. If there is a lot i free space i mount the new and old drive and use rsync to copy files across remembering to exclude dev mount media etc. Then I remove the old drive (if replacing) or just make sure its connected to the correct controller, reboot to the install disc/live cd/usb mount the new disk chroot edit fstab and lilo run mkintrid run lilo and reboot.

Edit

To move the home directory that is almost everything you have to make sure you the old home directory is gone otherwise it will still take up space but you wont be able to see it, i have made that mistake in the past and it took me quite a while to work out how i had run out of space.