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From: jack@turnkey.TCC.COM (Jack F. Vogel)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: Changing To Different Hard Drive Size
Keywords: hard disk
Message-ID: <215@turnkey.TCC.COM>
Date: 20 Jun 88 17:45:50 GMT
References: <314@wybbs.UUCP>
Reply-To: jack@turnkey.TCC.COM (Jack F. Vogel)
Organization: Turnkey Computer Consultants, Costa Mesa, CA
Lines: 38

In article <314@wybbs.UUCP> dpj@wybbs.UUCP (Deloy Johnson) writes:
>My question is :  Is there an easy way to transfer your entire system (dump)
>backup onto the larger hard disk or must you use "tar" to backup any necessary 
>files and then go through the tedious process of putting your operating system 
>back together from the distribution disks.  
 
Why do you find the installation of a couple of disks tedious?? There is no
need to go through the complete installation. What I do is install only the
basic runtime, link kit, and backup package; then relink the kernal (in order
to link the tape driver in), reboot and restore from tape. This can be done
in less than an hour provided you don't do the disk scan. Do not use tar for
complete filesystem backups, use cpio (or afio) since it handles /dev,
FIFO's ,and  empty directories whereas tar does not.

>Another situation is where a hard drive fails and the replacement disk is
>larger than the original -- Can you use an archive type backup tape to
>restore and still make use of the entire disk?
>
>I am currently using an Altos 386 Series 2000 running Xenix System V/386.
>In the Altos "restore" script it reads the file system size (and swap size)
>from the dump tape.  It then uses these numbers as parameters to "mkfs".
 
My advice is to avoid this script or something like dump (which is what it
sounds like). If you use cpio you will have no problem restoring a system
to a larger drive since it does not muck around with the superblock. For
this very reason restore will obliterate an active root file system and
running from floppy (so root isn't active) is a royal pain in the arse!!


					Hope this has been of help,



-- 
Jack F. Vogel
Turnkey Computer Consultants, Costa Mesa, CA
UUCP: ...{nosc|uunet}!turnkey!jack 
Internet: jack@turnkey.TCC.COM