On Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:02:02 -0500, "Adam Monsen" <haircut at gmail.com>
said:
> On Wed, 2008-10-15 at 14:45 -0400, Smith, Craig A wrote:
> > Would something like 
> >   #dd  if=/dev/hda  of=/dev/hdb
> > work?
> 
> I think so, assuming
> * neither are mounted
> * hdb is assigned to the new drive
> * the new drive is the same size or larger than the original
> 
> > I assume I would first need to format the replacement drive with
> > appropriate partitions (ext3 and swap).
> 
> dd also copies filesystems, so no need to format the new drive unless
> you want to change the partition layout.
> 
> After you've done the image transfer, you can use resize2fs to enlarge
> the partition.

First create the larger partitions on the new drive and then use dd on
the devices for those partitions.
E.g.
#dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdb1
#dd if=/dev/hda3 of=/dev/hdb3

resize2fs won't change the partition size but you can use it to extend
the filesytem to use the new, larger partition.