Upgrading external hard drive in Redhat 8.0

[SeeET]

Hi everyone, I'm a lightweight linux user and I need help copying files to a new drive. I'm running Redhat 8.0-8 and have a 130GB external hard drive that is mounted as /dev/sda1 I believe. The drive is almost 95% full so I have a newer empty 160GB external drive that I would like to transfer all the files over to. Can anyone tell me how I should do it? I've been told to use "dd" but I heard that can cause errors in this kind of transfer. Thanks!

 

[bersl2]

Partition drive. Format partition.
cp -a /root/dir/of/files/to/be/copied/* /mnt/point
Wash hands. Repeat.

 

[SeeET]

What is the downside to doing something like:

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb

 

[bersl2]

Well, I think that it can theoretically screw up if the drive geometries are different, but don't quote me on that. I'm just saying that by using higher-level operations, the transfer is guaranteed not to screw up.

 

[Biraca]

Originally posted by: SeeET
What is the downside to doing something like:

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb

Sounds like you are trying to copy the whole OS. you can try ghost or ghost 4 unix, but no guarantees these will work with the different drives either.

I tried a command like that in the past with two different model drives and although it seemed like everything was intact, I got some wierd errors... Some apps would crash or not start, etc.