Migrations, Partitions, Upgrades, Images, and confusions!

[enginemusic]

Current situation: Dual booting WinXP and Karmic. 500MB HD in 2 year old Dell giving warning signs of impending doom. Backing up frequently. Have new 1TB HD. Wish to upgrade to 10.04. As XP was supplied with Dell, have no install CD. I have 10.04 live CD and Pmagic CD.

What I want: My old XP partition (legacy software) and 10.04 on the new 1TB drive, with all my data (in Linux partition) and preferably all my settings and installed Linux software intact.

What's the easiest way to do this? Upgrade first? I should probably take this opportunity to put my data on a separate partition to the OS as well, though I guess I can do that later.

What's the best software/commands to use? I've looked at Clonezilla and Partimage, both seem to be able to do most of what I want, but it's going to take hours to figure it all out. The current partition setup is a bit of a dog's breakfast:
[img width=400 height=153]http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll106/mattandleigh/gparted.jpg[/img]

Any ideas?

[dibl]

Re: Migrations, Partitions, Upgrades, Images, and confusions!

What's the easiest way to do this? Upgrade first? I should probably take this opportunity to put my data on a separate partition to the OS as well, though I guess I can do that later.

...

Any ideas?

I don't think "easy" is going to be a feature of your project -- sorry.

No, you don't want to bother with an upgrade on that problematic hard drive -- that's a waste of time at this point. If I had your situation, I believe I would use clonezilla to clone both the Dell utility partition and also the Win XP partition, to identical-sized partitions on your new hard drive. Then you need 3 more partitions, one for Linux, one for swap, and the rest for your data.

So, my approach would be to use my favorite partitioning tool, with the new drive connected to the computer, and make 5 partitions as follows:

1. Primary partition, FAT 16, exactly the same size as your existing first partition
2. Primary partition, NTFS, exactly the same size as your existing second partition, with the "boot" flag set
3. Primary partition, NTFS, all the rest of the drive space not used by 4-6 below
4. Extended partition
5. First logical partition in the extended partition, 1.5X your memory, for swap
6. Second logical partition in the extended partition, 10G or larger, for Linux

Then you'll have to make a study of clonezilla -- there are step-by-step instructions on the 'net. I only used it once, for a project similar to yours, and yes, it is a bit of a pain to learn and understand the first time, but I have no special intellectual gifts so it is something that the average bloke can figure out in an hour or less. Clone the little Dell utility partition and put the image on the new partition for that purpose, and then clone the Win XP partition likewise.

Next, you need to test this much -- you need to make sure that Win XP will boot and run normally. I would not even touch the Kubuntu CD until you've got your Win XP system working satisfactorily, including seeing the NTFS data partition that will be shared with Linux.

When your Win XP system is working right, then (and only then) I would use my Kubuntu Alternate Install CD to install 10.04 on the partition that you made for it. Let it install Grub on the MBR -- it should find the Win XP OS and set it up on the boot menu automatically. Then you'll have to install your needed packages, and configure the Kubuntu desktop to your taste.

Good luck! The "Top 20" FAQs in my signature have some links that you may be needing soon.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Migrations, Partitions, Upgrades, Images, and confusions!

I think this could be done if your were very careful using standard linux tools.

Create the windows partitions to exactly the same dimensions as on the old drive then use dd to copy the data byte for byte.

sfdisk should give the details of the partition sizes and cylinders. I think - installing the new drive along side the old, creating the partitions, dd copy old to new, remove old, reboot to new and see if it works.

Seems the worst that could happen is wasting time if ti doesn't work

[enginemusic]

Re: Migrations, Partitions, Upgrades, Images, and confusions!

Wow, thanks dibl and oshunluvr, that really gives me something to work with.

dibl, the only thing I wonder is if partition 3 should be ext3 - I do 95% of my work in Linux now. Is there any advantage to using NTFS there?

Great plan of attack, and thanks for reminding me not to screw around with the linux install until everything is working under Windows, I can see that saving me some time.

Fortunately, the data's all backed up, and still on the smaller HD, so if it all goes pear-shaped I can start over.

I'm not looking forward to this, but better I do it on my time than wait for the HD to make the decision for me. A good friend ignored these signs for months and lost all the pictures of his kids...

[dibl]

Re: Migrations, Partitions, Upgrades, Images, and confusions!

dibl, the only thing I wonder is if partition 3 should be ext3 - I do 95% of my work in Linux now. Is there any advantage to using NTFS there?

I guessed you were more dependent on Windows than that, and assumed you would need to have all your data available in Windows. I'm not up to speed on how well Windows will read ext3 and/or ext4 -- you find stuff like this, but I can't personally vouch for it. I run Windows on a 40G VM under Linux -- if you don't need need ultimate graphics performance for gaming, I'd encourage you to look into this approach. Here's the how-to: http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3095339.0

If you want to try it in advance, you could install VMware Player on your dying drive, and play around a little to see if you might want to go this way. If you do, then you can drop the two NTFS partitions and combine that space, and then you can use 4 primary partitions (Dell, data, OS, swap).

EDIT: Actually, now I read what I wrote, if you don't have a native Windows installation on the hard drive (i.e. if you decide to use Windows on a VM with VMware), I suspect the Dell utilities will be rendered non-functional. I'm not sure about that -- you might want to research it, and then decide how important that bit is to you. If it's not going to help you, you could lose that partition. If you depend on the Dell utilities, then that might be the reason why you need Windows installed on the hard drive.

[enginemusic]

Re: Migrations, Partitions, Upgrades, Images, and confusions!

Thanks dibl. I should have mentioned that there's enough room on the current NTFS partition to do anything I would want to do in Windows (mostly the odd CAD drawing or Google Sketchup).

So in that case, I'll make the whole 3rd partition ext3.

Now, to find time! Got a young 'un to work around.

[dibl]

Re: Migrations, Partitions, Upgrades, Images, and confusions!

Good -- that makes sense.

FYI, I've been running Kubuntu on an ext4 partition since March, with no sign of any problem, and sidux on a netbook on ext4 since last year. It's the default filesystem for most of the leading Linux distributions, lately -- you might want to consider it.

[kyonides]

Re: Migrations, Partitions, Upgrades, Images, and confusions!

dibl, haven't you had to defrag that ext4 partition?

[dibl]

Re: Migrations, Partitions, Upgrades, Images, and confusions!

dibl, haven't you had to defrag that ext4 partition?

No. I haven't even looked at the detailed output from chkdsk -- I guess I could look at it and see, but I have no reason to be concerned about fragmentation. What makes you ask that?

[kyonides]

Re: Migrations, Partitions, Upgrades, Images, and confusions!

Oh, it was because some IT guy once told me that ext4 could get fragmented in a faster rate or pace than any ext3 partition.

[dibl]

Re: Migrations, Partitions, Upgrades, Images, and confusions!

OK. It says here that one of the advantages of ext4 is the "Multiblock Allocator" which reduces file fragmentation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext4

[kyonides]

Re: Migrations, Partitions, Upgrades, Images, and confusions!

Oh, that sounds great. It can be used even in older hdd's?

[dibl]

Re: Migrations, Partitions, Upgrades, Images, and confusions!

I've never heard of a problem related to the age or model of hard drive -- it should be fine. Of course, some day that old hard drive is going to spit out its last byte -- you're not going to blame ext4 when it finally croaks, are you?

[kyonides]

Re: Migrations, Partitions, Upgrades, Images, and confusions!

If it were NTFS not ext(any number) I would!