Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 22:09:54 -0500 (CDT) From: Jerry Dunham <dunham@rider.fc.net> To: questions@FreeBSD.org Cc: grog@lemis.de (Greg Lehey) Subject: Need help upgrading to larger disk Message-ID: <199705280309.WAA00312@rider.fc.net>
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Well, I'm in over my head again and sure could use some help. I have a little-used notebook running FreeBSD, and I'd like to make more use of it. First, though, I'd like to take advantage of an opportunity to upgrade the hard drive in it from the current .5 GB to a .8 GB, but I need to do it rather quickly so as to free up the .5 for use elsewhere (otherwise the .8 gets used there). This may be easy for some of you, but it's not immediately obvious to me how to go about it. I've poked around in the Handbook and in Greg Lehey's "The Complete FreeBSD" but didn't stumble across anything that really covered my situation. Here's what I've got to work with: A LapLink cable A Dell Latitude LX I built from leftover parts running FreeBSD, containing the .5 GB drive Another Latitude LX I built from leftover parts running Windoze An empty 810 MB hard drive This here desktop machine running FreeBSD, connected to the net, with an attached SCSI CD-ROM drive (I have the Walnut Creek CD- ROM), a SCSI 525 tape drive, and nonworking floppy drives FreeBSD 2.1.5 on both FreeBSD machines What complicates this is that the notebooks have no SCSI capability, and only one each floppy and hard drives. My assumption is that I ought to be able to put the blank .8 drive in the Windoze notebook, boot from a floppy containing a minimal FreeBSD, connect the two notebooks with the LapLink cable (using either the serial or the parallel ports), and suck all the contents of the .5 drive over to the .8. I have no idea how to do this, though I could do it easily on my old Atari (but then that was SCSI). I have successfully formatted a UFS floppy on the FreeBSD notebook, but can't find boot.flp on the hard drive to try sticking it on the formatted floppy. I assume that I could use the LapLink cable between the FreeBSD notebook and my desktop machine to suck the needed file(s) off of the CD-ROM, but have never done that before. If someone could tell me what bare minimum set of files to copy to the UFS floppy to boot and transfer the files, perhaps I won't need to involve the CD-ROM drive. This is further complicated by my need to do this by Friday morning or give up and let the .8 drive go on to other uses that the .5 could serve equally well. Surely, this can't be difficult, and must be something that others have faced when upgrading as well. Or does everyone else just reinstall from scratch every time (something I've never done)? Assume that I have no idea what I'm doing and you won't be wrong. Thanks for any assistance y'all can provide. -- Jerry Dunham GS650G Atarian ordinaire jdunham@fc.net (512)335-0674 (H) jdunham@awesome-f0.us.dell.com (512)728-4026 (O) Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.
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