Transfer of PCLinuxOS to another PC. (Solved)

[scbs29]

I have just been given a pc with a better spec than my present one
(Pentium 4 dual core 3GHz instead of Athlon 2800XP, GeForce 7895 GT
instead of GeForce 7600 GS) and want to transfer my present PCLos onto the new one.
At present I dual boot XP Pro and PCLos, with XP on the master hdd, and PCLos on partitions
set up on the secondary hdd. For PCLos I created a 50Gb partition on the secondary hdd, and let PCLos
sort out the partitions for installation.
df gives the following :
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdb5             7.7G  4.9G  2.4G  68% /
/dev/hdb7              37G   16G   22G  43% /home
/dev/hda1              77G   21G   57G  27% /mnt/win_c - master hdd
/dev/hdb1             185G  112G   74G  61% /mnt/win_d - slave hdd less PCLos
df: `/root/usbfs': Permission denied
none                 1014M  1.4M 1013M   1% /tmp

The PCLos installation is set up as I want it, and I dont particularly want to start from scratch again.
I thought I could make images of the / and /home partitions using Acronis True Image and copy these to a USB hdd.
I could then create a partition for PCLos on the secondary hdd on the new pc, installing a 'bare bones' PCLos into the new
partition, again letting the installation sort out the division of the partition. I would then use True Image to replace the new / and /home partitions
with the saved images, and use a live CD to redo MBR.

Is this a feasible approach ?
Might there be any problems ?
What if I made the partition on the new pc larger, eg. 100 Gb, then did the 'bare bones' installation before replacing the / and
/home ? Would this lead to any problems ?

Any advice gratefully received.
TIA

[scbs29]

Sorry, should also have said new pc has SATA hdds, my present one has IDE.

[menotu]

Mondo Archive may help, it covers most bases  - the following link was posted by Texstar

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,59705.0.html

And bear in mind there is a new PCLos distro coming out very shortly (which requires a "fresh" install)

[ThirdOfSix]

scbs29,

Well, arn't we a spoil sport?

I was about to say to just change the video to vesa and put the old drive in the new machine and boot it up...then I read your second post.

First, are you sure that the new machine does not have any IDE ports?

If you do indeed already have Acronis, I would back up the drive before doing anything else.

I would strongly recomend trying to use the Make LiveCD function of PCLOS on the system. It probably won't work with the default settings of making the ISO file in the root partition because it does not look like you have enough room on that partition and you will get the error that many of us have grown to hate.

There is a thread with a tutorial on that function here on the forum that should tell you all that you need to know to created the CD or DVD.

Once you have a live CD of your system, you can boot with it to test it and if it works, you can then install your existing system on the new machine with everything intact.

By creating new partitions on the new machine before you do the install, you can make the partitions any size that you desire and then install to them. You do this by selecting "use existing partitions" choice while doing the install.

This is by far the easiest way to do what you want to do.

I have used Acronis to clone an installation to a different sized drive and partitions but, I don't think it is something that you want to try the first time with a system that you really don't want to lose.

[YouCanToo]

Sorry, should also have said new pc has SATA hdds, my present one has IDE.

Is you cd/dvd a sata or IDE?

[YouCanToo]

If you really need a IDE  port(s) one can always add a PCI to IDE card. They are really cheap now a days. I just go one for $15.00

[scbs29]

Thanks for the replies.
I have decided to reinstall from scratch.