Yes, this is a better way to do it than DD.

Process is (assuming IDE):

1. Shut down PC
2. Move main HDD to hdb (primary slave)
3. Add new hdd as hda (primary master)
4. Boot a live CD (knoppix, ubuntu, gentoo, whatever flavor you like).
5. fdisk your hda to a similar layout (but using the larger space of the 
new disk).
6. mkfs your partitions.
7. Mount each old partition, its corresponding new partition, and use cp 
-a to copy the file structure.
7.1. fix your fstab if you changed the partition numbers.
8. run grub or lilo to install the boot record. Or dd if=/dev/sdb 
of=/dev/hda bs=440b count=1 (this should copy boot record from old disk 
to new disk)
9. shut down, remove live cd.
10. remove old HDD.
11. boot new hdd. everything should be fine.

-Dean

Yaron wrote:
> I usually put the new drive in the running system, partition and mkfs 
> the partitions the way I like 'em, then boot from a CD and mount both 
> filesystem trees under /old and /new, and fo a find . -mount -print | 
> cpio -pVd [new drive]. Then I reinstall grub or lilo or whatever.
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2008, Smith, Craig A wrote:
> 
>>
>> I?m running Debian stable.  Everything is working fine but there?s little
>> free disk space remaining.  How can I migrate everything to a larger 
>> disk? 
>> Ideally, this would include all programs, configuration files, user?s 
>> data,
>> crontab?s, etc.  I want to avoid reinstalling/configuring all the running
>> services.
>>
>>  
>>
>> Would something like
>>
>>  
>>
>>     #dd  if=/dev/hda  of=/dev/hdb
>>
>>  
>>
>> work?  How would, could (should?) I use dd?   I assume I would first 
>> need to
>> format the replacement drive with appropriate partitions (ext3 and 
>> swap). 
>> After the files are copied, I suppose I could rejumper the target 
>> drive to
>> make it /hda or just edit it?s /etc/fstab.
>>
>>  
>>
>> What other tools might fit the task?
>>
>>  
>>
>> -Craig
>>
>>
>>
> 
> 
> -Yaron
> 
> --
> 
> 
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