"first tutorial" checking before I post...

[ryokimball]

Hello! Not trying to promote another forum or anything, but this guy is wanting to move everything from one drive to another, and to my understanding this could easily be done with a Linux LiveCD. Here's the thread, and here's what I'm fixing to post:

Well, I'm not great at at tutorials, but here's my best try:
First you need to download and burn the ISO of Puppy Linux. While you're waiting, you might also want to look up some last minute details on how to use the "dd" command (here might be a good place to start). It should be fairly straight forward, but it's never a bad idea to be prepared (not to mention I personally have never used this on an entire hard drive to date).
Also, I'm assuming you have all of the drives that you will be using connected already. Since you are unused to operating in Linux, you might want to use Window's Disk Management to format the new drive(s) (control panel --> administrative tools --> computer management _>Disk Management).
After everything is said and done, reboot and load da Puppy. Some minor configuration is necessary (keyboard and display settings), but it will quickly load to the desktop not very different Windows, bar two main exceptions: one click activates icons, and right-click the desktop to get the "start" menu.
Now, near the upper-left corner there is a "drives" icon; click it. There will be a list of drives connected to the computer. The easiest way to identify the drives, if you know the order which they are connected (master/slave) is alphabetically --hda is the first master, hdb is first slave, hdc is second master, et cetera. If there are numbers, then these are the partitions on that hard drive (exempli gratia, hda1 is the first partition on the first drive). Otherwise, if you remember the sizes of the drives, you can use this to identify as well, since this information is listed as well. Note the location that these are mounted (simply click appropriately; you will probably want to mount all of the drives); most likely they will be mounted into a directory under "/mnt" (e.g. the first SATA drive will most likely be mounted under /mnt/sda1).
Finally, you enter console (there should be an icon on desktop). This is the equivalent to "command line" in Windows, with some differences. Just to do some double-checking, let's use this to make sure we know which drive is where. "cd" is still change directory; type

cd /mnt

to go to this directory, then type

ls

(the equivalent to "dir") to show which directories are there. From the informaton given, you can deduce once and for all which drives are mounted where (so if you type

ls sda
(or)
ls /mnt/sda

and folders such as "Windows" and "Program Files" are displayed, then chances are this is your "C:\" drive). Once this is all figured out, you use the "dd" command to copy the information from one drive to another. The command should be similar (but not exact) to

dd if=hda of=sda

.


I'm not completely sure of myself, especially with the "dd" command, so please comment as needed.

[Freston]

I really don't understand what is so difficult about moving all files of one disk to another.
But then *old geek mode on* when I got my first burner I tried to copy all of my HD to my CD-R (because I had Win3.11 on 8 3.5 inch disks and Office came on 27(!) disks and I NEVER want to make a clean install like that EVER), but that is how I learned that Windows files are not really all that transportable.

But, for the sake of argument, let's assume Linux can move those files around on disks without breaking the system.

Then he needs to know (and thus told explicitly) that his disks are now part of the filesystem. So he doesn't have drives, but rather he has mountpoints. And mountpoints are no more difficult than directories

Now please forgive me if I am wrong, but is moving your stuff from one disk to the other not the same as moving stuff from one directory to the other??

All you need to know is which directory is which 'drive' and then ctrl-a ctrl-x ctrl-v coffee done


Or am I missing the point?

[ryokimball]

Well, that is one way to do it, but I think simply copy and pasting does corrupt Windows, but "dd" does not. It's more technical than that, of course (but I don't know the technicallities, if they do exist). I'll look up...wow, deja vu.





Umm.... I'll look up what I can this afternoon or later (I've got to get ready for school and go there now).
(Am I the only one that tries to avoid deja vu situations?)