Adding old harddrive to new system?

English Hardware
1

Hi,

I installed the latest and greatest (SuSe 11.0, network install, after booting from LiveCD) on my new system. In several posts I’m addressing some serious issues. I believe with some help from you I will solve them. This post is about something I would like to accomplish when everything seems to work as I expect it to do.

I would like to put my old hard drive in my new system. This will result in me having two hard drives, and an external hard drive (nice), but more importantly, in a whopping Terabyte of storage!

The big question is how should I do that. This is the scenario I’m thinking about:

  1. Build the ‘Old’ hard drive into my new system (been there, done that, I hope);
  2. Cross fingers and hope Linux will see the new (old) hard drive, and offer mount points for it;
  3. Move data I would like to keep from ‘Old’ to ‘New’;
  4. Reformat ‘Old’ drive so Linux can be installed on it;
  5. Install Linux on my ‘Old’ drive;
  6. Move data from ‘New’ to ‘Old’;
  7. Free the old partition containing my current Linux installation;
  8. Cross fingers again, and hope Linux will now boot from the new ‘Old’ drive;

I’m new to this, hence the finger crossing. Is this a feasible scenario, or do I need to follow an other list of steps? Or do I need to flesh out some steps (particular the steps where I cross my fingers).

If you could offer some insights in this scenario I would be obliged.

Abel

2

I’m really confused as to what is NEW and what is OLD here:
as su
fdisk -l

post result here and comments as to what is what

3

It is obvious but first check the jumper master/slave on the hds if you are working with ata drives. Then there is no problem. If you are booting an already installed linux,as i understand, you will use yast -> partitioner to set the mount point for the new(old) drive and thats all. Just reboot even if not necessary so you will access this drive from my computer applet. Now backup everything you need.

4

You again. With the same preamble. :wink:

You will need to change the boot configuration, maybe more than once, depending on how the 2nd drive is physically connected in the system and the bios boot setup, during and after installation. To avoid surprises you need to have thought this through before doing the 2nd install.