To install a new hard disc

[satimis]

Hi folks,

Old HDD - Seagate 1T SATA II without partition
New HDD - WD Caviar Black, Model: WD1002FAEX
1 TB, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache, 7200 RPM
WD Caviar Black 1 TB SATA Hard Drives ( WD1002FAEX )

Virtualizer - Orcle VirtualBox (VBox) (Version 3.1.6 r59338 ) (new Version 3.2.8 )


My target to get a new HDD of equal capacity is :-
The VBox was originally installed on the package download on Sun website not on Ubuntu repo. Therefore I can't run upgrade to install the new version of VBox on repo.
(Remark: I did it before upgrading the new version of VBox on Sun website. Afterwards it took me several days to fix the problem before the virtual machine can work properly)


Steps to be performed:-

1) Install Ubuntu 10.04 on the new HDD as host and Oracle VBox on repo afterwards
2) copy all VM images (*.vdi) from the old HDD to the new HDD
3) start Oracle VirtualBox and install the new VMs using the all old *vdi images


I hope above steps will work without much problem. If fail I'll perform following steps to clone the old HDD;

1) connect both new and old HDD to SATA ports
2) start the PC with an installer (Linux)
3) Run following command

   dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

4) after cloning finished shutdown the PC and disconnect the old HDD
5) boot the PC
6) start Ubuntu 10.04


Comment and advice would be appreciated. TIA


This is my first time using WD HDD. I have been using Seagate HDD for prolonged time.

WD Caviar Black, Model: WD1002FAEX is SATA 3 HDD. But I'll run it on SATA II port with the pins reset. I have made some search before. WD Black series works perfect (of course it can't be compared with SSD and WD VelociRaptor). I can accept its price which is about 40% more expensive than other brand of equal size. Neither I would consider adding a PCI-SATA 3 interface card. I prefer upgrade the complete PC. 1T HDD capacity will be sufficient for my present use. The old HDD will be reused on another PC (also a virtual machine running KVM/QEMU) which is now running a 600G Seagate HDD. The 600G Seagate HDD will be used for storage.


B.R.
satimis

[neildomo]

A bit of advice, 1GB is a rough estimate of disk space; one disk might have a couple more megabytes than the other, which can make dd fail (can't copy 1001MB onto a 999MB disk). I usually leave a bit of disk space (100MB?) wasted at the end of the disk, so that this isn't an issue.

Also, if you have files on an HDD then you have to have at least one partition (unless you're using raw disks with Oracle). sudo fdisk -l can show you what your disks look like (forget if it's in /sbin or /usr/sbin).

[satimis]

A bit of advice, 1GB is a rough estimate of disk space; one disk might have a couple more megabytes than the other, which can make dd fail (can't copy 1001MB onto a 999MB disk). I usually leave a bit of disk space (100MB?) wasted at the end of the disk, so that this isn't an issue.

Also, if you have files on an HDD then you have to have at least one partition (unless you're using raw disks with Oracle). sudo fdisk -l can show you what your disks look like (forget if it's in /sbin or /usr/sbin).

Hi,

Thanks for your advice.

Follows are info of the running HDD

$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0003a4bf

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1      118706   953505913+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2          118707      121601    23254087+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5          118707      121601    23254056   82  Linux swap / Solaris

$ df -H

Filesystem             Size   Used  Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1              962G   481G   432G  53% /
none                   4.1G   304k   4.1G   1% /dev
none                   4.1G   295k   4.1G   1% /dev/shm
none                   4.1G   209k   4.1G   1% /var/run
none                   4.1G      0   4.1G   0% /var/lock
none                   4.1G      0   4.1G   0% /lib/init/rw

$ df -a

Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1            938544104 469119672 421749140  53% /
proc                         0         0         0   -  /proc
none                         0         0         0   -  /sys
none                         0         0         0   -  /sys/fs/fuse/connections
none                         0         0         0   -  /sys/kernel/debug
none                         0         0         0   -  /sys/kernel/security
none                   3963088       296   3962792   1% /dev
none                         0         0         0   -  /dev/pts
none                   3968004       288   3967716   1% /dev/shm
none                   3968004       204   3967800   1% /var/run
none                   3968004         0   3968004   0% /var/lock
none                   3968004         0   3968004   0% /lib/init/rw
binfmt_misc                  0         0         0   -  /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc
gvfs-fuse-daemon             0         0         0   -  /home/satimis/.gvfs

This box is mainly used for testing software, NOT for production. There are still plenty of space. Data are copied to external HDD periodically.

B.R.
satimis