On Sun, 04 Apr 2010 18:34:27 -0700, walt wrote:

> My instinct is to use dd to duplicate the entire old disk to the new
> (unformatted) disk and then use gparted to twiddle it from there. (But
> I do love a puzzle ;o)

This works but has a some disadvantages. First, it is very slow. Then you
copy all filesystems as-is, including any fragmentation (which may be
significant if the old disk is nearly full). Also, rearranging the
partitions can be extremely time consuming, and not that straightforward
if you are moving partition start points.

A different sized disk generally deserves a different partition layout, so
starting from scratch and copying only the data is a better option.

You can also substantially reduce downtime by first rsyncing while the
system is running (using either -x or bind mounts). That will give a
slightly inconsistent root, so you then repeat the process from a live CD
(using --delete with rsync) to clean things up. The latter rsync takes a
fraction of the time as 99.*% of the data is already cpied.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

C&W music backward: get yer dog, wife, job, truck, kids, and sobriety
back.