I have landed myself in a bit of a pickle. Needing to upgrade my system for 11.4 I went ahead and bought a refurbished Compaq. The intention was to merely replace the smaller drive with my existing drive. Only problem is that on opening the Compaq I found a SATA drive. Being a Compaq there is no space for a second drive, so I must copy my existing system via CDROM. As the 11.4 has gone through a number of updates since I installed, I cannot use the original installation CD. Downloading is out of the question for my link speed. I made an automatic backup when installing but am not sure where it is or whether it is also kept up to date. Anyway, does the backup contain merely the system and then require further transfer of home folders, etc? The alternative, of course, is to source locally the latest version that will not require hours of updating. 
On 07/08/2011 02:36 PM, johnmidl wrote:
> I made an automatic backup when
> installing but am not sure where it is or whether it is also kept up to
> date.
i’m unfamiliar with an “automatic backup”…what application did you use
to make the backup?
> Anyway, does the backup contain merely the system and then require
> further transfer of home folders, etc?
that will depend on how you set up the application to do the
backup…but, i can’t imagine a backup which would backup the system and
not the /home (that is completely backwards)
> The alternative, of course, is to
> source locally the latest version that will not require hours of
> updating.
what do you mean source locally? no matter where you get it from, the
install iso for 11.4 will require lots of updates to be downloaded…
sorry, i don’t see a solution other than use what you have now (on the
old machine) and get 12.1 DVD in the mail soon after release, install
from that to the new machine and then copy your data in… that is about
the only way i can see to minimize download…
johnmidl wrote:
> I have landed myself in a bit of a pickle. Needing to upgrade my system
> for 11.4 I went ahead and bought a refurbished Compaq. The intention was
> to merely replace the smaller drive with my existing drive. Only problem
> is that on opening the Compaq I found a SATA drive. Being a Compaq there
> is no space for a second drive, so I must copy my existing system via
> CDROM.
Does the Compaq have any IDE ports at all? e.g. how is the CDROM/DVD
connected?
If it does, then perhaps it is possible to connect your IDE drive to the
computer temporarily (hanging out on a wire) whilst you copy the data
from the IDE drive to the internal SATA drive.
On 2011-07-08 14:36, johnmidl wrote:
>
> I have landed myself in a bit of a pickle. Needing to upgrade my system
> for 11.4 I went ahead and bought a refurbished Compaq. The intention was
If the old system still works, you can transfer the system via network. You
can install on the new machine a new system, small (8 GB), and use it as a
rescue system to transfer the data to a new partition(s) from the old
machine. Grub will have to be reinstalled.
Alternatively, you can use a live system on CD to do the same thing.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
On 2011-07-08 14:50, DenverD wrote:
> that will depend on how you set up the application to do the backup…but,
> i can’t imagine a backup which would backup the system and not the /home
> (that is completely backwards)
I can 
He probably used YaST backup.
There are scripts that do the same, backup the system and ignore home, and
viceversa, the other way round. For example, home changes hourly, system
perhaps once a week. Why backup at the same rate?
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
On 2011-07-08 14:53, Dave Howorth wrote:
> If it does, then perhaps it is possible to connect your IDE drive to the
> computer temporarily (hanging out on a wire) whilst you copy the data
> from the IDE drive to the internal SATA drive.
Or via usb converter.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
You can get a very economical IDE/SATA -> USB converter like this one
Amazon.com: USB 2.0 to IDE / SATA Converter Cable: Electronics
for under $10