[NTLUG:Discuss] How to move data from one drive to another

[Stuart Johnston]

Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-08-04 at 16:20 -0500, Stuart Johnston wrote:
> 
>>I've used that method a few times (after booting with Knoppix) and never 
>>had any trouble.
> 
> 
> I typically try to use the distro's CD and recovery mode.  For Ext3 and
> XFS, it shouldn't matter, but with ReiserFS, you're asking for a world
> of hurt if your implementation doesn't match exactly.

If you are using dd, you never mount the drives.  Why would the file 
system matter?

> 
> 
>>When similar questions have been asked on this list before, some people
>>have reported problems if the disk geometries are not similar enough. 
> 
> 
> Yep, you should have the _exact_ same number of logical heads/sectors.

I've probably copied drives with dd 3 or 4 different times.  Never were 
the drives the same size or brand.  Most recently it was a 5-year-old, 
20G, WD drive onto a new Hitachi 80G.  Is it possible that I just got 
lucky and these otherwise completely different drives have the same 
geometry?  Seems unlikely to me but then I've never really understood 
the complexities of modern drive geometry (LBA modes, BIOS vs. OS, 
physical/logical).