From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Mar 6 14:06:53 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 74EA216A4CE for ; Sun, 6 Mar 2005 14:06:53 +0000 (GMT) Received: from rwcrmhc11.comcast.net (rwcrmhc11.comcast.net [204.127.198.35]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2232E43D2D for ; Sun, 6 Mar 2005 14:06:53 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from emccoy@haystacks.org) Received: from [127.0.0.1] (c-24-98-109-41.atl.client2.attbi.com[24.98.109.41]) by comcast.net (rwcrmhc11) with ESMTP id <2005030614065201300oct4ae>; Sun, 6 Mar 2005 14:06:52 +0000 Message-ID: <422B0E7D.9010606@haystacks.org> Date: Sun, 06 Mar 2005 09:06:53 -0500 From: Eric McCoy User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.8 (Windows/20040913) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Ralph References: <20050305155715.96704.qmail@web53406.mail.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <20050305155715.96704.qmail@web53406.mail.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: Swapping hard drives X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 06 Mar 2005 14:06:53 -0000 Ralph wrote: > Hello folks > I'm looking to do a quick swap on a hard disk I currently have in my FreeBSD file-server. It's an old 30Gb disk, and I've bought a nice, new big one to replace it. The problem is, I'm not sure what the best way to do this is. I have Samba shares on there, and other things, and as far as I'm concerned it's better if the system doesn't know [or care] that the disk is being swapped out, does that make sense? > > I guess what I'm asking is this, what's the best way to do a swap like this? Put the new disk in your server, partition it "similarly" to the old disk, format, and copy over your data. Then remove the old disk and reuse its connectors for your new disk (or just update /etc/fstab). The idea is that your old filesystem is, say, /dev/ad2s1e. That's what you want your new one to be. All you need to do, really, is juggle IDE cables or SCSI IDs to make that happen. You can also do an over-the-network copy, but that will obviously be much slower and requires two FreeBSD computers besides.