Hi,

I've read with interest the attempts to upgrade the 80GB box with a bigger disk and taking the hard work of previous posters into account have ordered a WD1600BB drive.

However my disk is still nearly full (hence the reason for the upgrade) and I do not have time to watch everything (else I would not need the upgrade).

Would it be possible for me to clone my 80GB to the 160 using a Linux boot CD.? I have hardware for just connecting the drive via a usb/ide cable and then just replace the HD?

Anyone have any views/ideas/tips?

TIA

Hi,

I have recently done something similar using Linux. (I had to copy the contents of a drive running Ubuntu/MythTV - a Linux PVR - onto another hard disk.)

There is a DD command in LINUX which allows you to copy the contents of a drive or partition to another drive or to a file. I only have a single USB/HD cable so I had to copy it first to a file and then use DD to write it back to the new disk. Once this is done, you should be able to use one of the Linux partition editors (I used GParted) to increase the partition to take up the entire disk.

Wikipedia has a good entry on DD.

You need to get your head around the Linux drive naming conventions and be 100% sure that you are writing to the correct disk. If you use the incorrect one, you can trash your PC! I'm from a Windows background so I was cautious to the point of paranoia!

You should be able to use any Linux live CD but not all of them have a partition manager installed. Puppy Linux isn't bad. It's a cut down, slightly quirky, version of linux but it does recognise most hardware and has a drive mounting utility which will help identify what the drives are called. PartedMagic is also good - it is designed just for this sort of thing. (I'd forgotten about PartedMagic when I did the cloning or I would have used that!)

Another (possible safer) alternative might be to get the box to format the hard disk a normal and simply copy all the recording folders from the old disk to the new one (using Linux). I don't know if that would work, but I don't see why not.

>>Another (possible safer) alternative might be to get the box to format the hard disk a normal and simply copy all the recording folders from the old disk to the new one (using Linux).

Now that is a very good idea. I was expecting the partitions to be sized acordingly.

Now I just have to figure out how to access the data partitions in Linux

I know that feeling! One problem is that for safety some live Linux distros don't mount the drives by default, so you can't accidentally damage anything. So you might have to work out both what the partitions are called and how to mount them!

On the plus side, though, most recent distros can read and write to most file systems so, once you've got past the mechanics, you can use your Windows disk as a temporary repository for the files during the transfer if you need.

I'm not a linux expert but if you have any questions I might be able to help.

OK, I took your advice and just swapped the disks and formatted in the PVR.
I've copied the files from the small partition to a backup disk on one of my PCs.

How do I access the 79GB partition. I can see it in qparted as /dev/sda2 but seem unable to view in the file explorer.

Almost there.

It sounds like the partition isn't mounted. I assume that qparted shows both partitions as being the same type (probably ext3). If so, there should be no problem in accessing it.

I normally use whatever the inbuilt mounting utility is in the distro to do this but you can do it manually. I'm on a PC at the moment so I can't check but I think the following will work. Go in to a terminal screen and type
mount /dev/sda2
and then press enter.

As you say, so nearly there!

Incidentally, where did you get the WD1600BB and how much did it cost? My 80GB drive is bursting at the seams!

Got the drive from stuff-uk.net for 28.38 +vat + £5 next day delivery. I bought one for a mate who has the same pvr, so halved the postage.

what drives me nuts about this Linux is you can't do anything as a user. I navigate to the tree and want to add a folder to mount the second partition and it tells me I am not allowed to add a folder, so then I have to see how to get to a command line. If I end up in a tty session, I have been unbale to find the command to logout.

Like a baby learning to walk all over again.

Given up. Am watching as much as I can. It is not too bad, some stuff I have seen before you it is not that important.

Should ahve watched as a much as needed, then I'll just swap the disks again.

Acronis nor Linux do not like the partition.

Thanks for tying to help.

If you want to acess the files on an XP PC read this thread:

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s...d.php?t=664386

There is software called 'linux reader' which will show both drives.

Thanks AJ, but I was just trying to use a Linux boot cd to transfer the video files in the second partition, but could not get Acronis or Linus to recognise, so I just watched what I needed and then swapped disks.