1. Introduction

This document explains how to transfer, or migrate, an entire Linux system, including LILO, from one hard disk to another.

In the following explanation, /dev/hda (first IDE hard disk) means the old disk, and /dev/hdb (second IDE hard disk) means the new disk.

Specific partitions on the old disk are referred to as /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2, and so on. Specific partitions on the new disk are referred to as /dev/hdb1, /dev/hdb2, and so on.

The explanations in this document are based on Red Hat 6.0. They have also been tested with Debian 2.1, Slackware 3.5 and SuSE 6.2; we indicate a few differences to note if you're using those distributions.

If the commands don't work properly on your system, please let us know, mentioning what distribution you're using.