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10:34 PM, Aug 6, 2006 toot this
SATA Linux
I discovered, last night, the ease with which an entire linux system can be transferred from one hard drive to another. I got my new serial ATA drive working with a linux kernel update and decided that since the BIOS doesn't treat it like a normal hard drive, but rather as a SCSI drive, I figured it wouldn't hurt anything to try.

So, I copied all 629 MB of system data over to my new drive, and extracted it all in the places it would need to be in the new filesystem. I figured that the kernel was responsible for populating the "proc," "sys," and "dev" filesystems, and that just making empty directories would be enough. I was right about the first two, but after my first attempted reboot, and telling the BIOS to boot from SCSI, the system wouldn't come up, complaining that it was unable to create an initial terminal.

I changed the boot order back to using the main hard drive again, and when back into my old installation, which came up fine, as I had changed nothing on it. I tried tarring up the "dev" directory and extracting that into the new filesystem, and to my great surprise, it worked like a champ when I rebooted into the SCSI disk.

My linux machine is officially back up and running and in better shape, concerning both hardware and software, than it has ever been.

Here's to another 487-day uptime!

8 comments

chris took the time to say:
perhaps you would like to determine the ease with which you can fix a 5 year old Dell laptop that only turns on to tell me that there is a "bad memory module" and that i need to shut the computer down. i also fried my 160-gig "eBook" hard drive. grrrrrrr.

5:05 PM, Aug 6, 2006

Jeff blurted:
I'm not being factious when I say this, but I'd get a UPS. They're just a Good Idea.

10:24 AM, Aug 7, 2006

ralfonso was sure you'd want to know:
you need udev!

1:32 PM, Aug 7, 2006

ralfonso interrupted with:
you need udev!

1:35 PM, Aug 7, 2006

ralfonso wants you to know:
see? I MEAN IT

1:36 PM, Aug 7, 2006

bahua commented:
Is there such a thing as a quiet UPS? If so, I would definitely consider it. However, a surge protector that isn't spent, like the one I have now, would suffice.

2:43 PM, Aug 7, 2006

Jeff thinks:
the one i have only makes beeping sounds (no buzzing if that's what you're talking about) which i would hope is configable.

3:08 PM, Aug 7, 2006

rose chimed in with:
you should have used pata, it plays well with *nix, you half dead mutha f*cker!!!

my apologies

TJ Terlaje

2:42 AM, Aug 9, 2006

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