[SOLVED] Howto change sdb from 500GB to 1TB?

[janpihlgren]

I'm using ThinkPad W701 with Mageia 4. My sda is 320 GB where the OS is located. My sdb is 500 GB where I store virtual OSes for VMware Workstation. The size of sdb begin to be too little so I whish to change to a bigger one, 1 TB. I have already purchased the harddrive, 2,5" Hitachi HTS541010ASE680.
I have the idea that after switching the disks format the disk (sdb) and then copy data from the old disk to the new one.
When I do the switching the computer will only start to terminal and maintenance mode. The sdb will be located when I run fdisk -l.
Before switching I unmount sdb.
What to do to have Mageia up and running in normal, GUI, mode?
Do I have to clone the disks before switching? I'm a little scary to do cloning because I'm afraid to do it the wrong way.

[magfan]

Once I did it like this:

1. connecting the new drive via USB (-> /dev/sdc)
2. formatting the new drive
3. creating a new partition on the new drive (-> /dev/sdc1)
4. copying everything from /dev/sdb1 to /dev/sdc1 (running "cp -a" as root)
5. changing /etc/fstab (very important!)
6. shutdown the system
7. removing old disk
8. building in new disk
9. starting the system
10. changing /etc/fstab

Point 5 is very important. You have to exchange the UUID of your old drive with the device path:

Code: Select all

UUID=... /your_mountpoint ext4 acl,relatime 1 2

to

/dev/sdb1 /your_mountpoint ext4 acl,relatime 1 2


Once you rebooted your system you can replace the device path with the UUID of the new disk.

[wintpe]

ideally

you should no longer refer to file systems in fstab with there old scsi disk names, as these change during device scanning.

and /dev/sdb1 could be /dev/sdc1 if a new disk is added.

this could mean, that adding a usb drive at switch on time causes the system to go single user.

use the CLI command : blkid to find the UUID of the new filesystem you want to mount and add that instead

ie UUID=cryto-likestring-of-blkid

of the scsi disk path.

the reason your system starts up in single user mode is any filesystem, that either does not fsck, or show clean status or that disappears from fstab
means the system is in jeopardy, and the system holds at single user readonly mounted root to prevent any further action happening until things are set right.

at the single user prompt you can enter the root password, followed by

mount -o remount /

this will mount / (or root filesysystem) as read write

and you can now edit fstab and hash out the offending file system to get the system running in gui mode (providing of course that what you hash out is not depended upon for starting in run level 5, like /home for example)



regards peter

[magfan]

Of course it should be verified that the new USB device really is /dev/sdc. Also, before formatting you always have to check whether the device you are going to format is empty. Or at least it should be the device you want to format.

As I mentioned before I had to do this some time ago and it worked - even under mga4. But if I understand it correctly I should better do something like:

1. connecting the new disk via USB
2. getting the UUID of the new disk
3. changing /etc/fstab (=adding a new line for the new disk with its UUID and removing/commenting out the line for the old disk)
4. formatting the new disk
5. creating a new partition on the new disk
6. copying everything from the old disk to the new disk
7. shutdown the system
8. removing old disk
9. building in new disk
10. starting the system

[janpihlgren]

I understand.
I just doing copy from old sdb to the new one, its lot of data copy.
I'll return and tell how it's going.

[wintpe]

magfan

you had everything right, just the UUID ideally should be done.

just to be clear, there can be a UUID of the disk, when used with LVM, and there is a UUID of the file system, they are different.

but blkid returns the UUID of the file system.

UUID's are getting used in more than just disks to tag things with a Unique reference.

whats is a filesystem, the ext4 , bit created with mkfs.ext4 on the device, hence why i dont refer to the disk, which can be seen with fdisk -l
with or without a filesystem in place.

its a filesystem you mount via fstab, not a disk.

hopefully that has not created more confusion......

regards peter

[janpihlgren]

I thank You for the help. It solved my problem. Spacial you magfan,
Specific the point 3 on your last post,
Thank you.