[GRLUG] Question of how to copy 20 Gig HD to smaller HD?

[Casey DuBois]

On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 9:41 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 7:38 PM, Rich Nagel <networkman at triton.net> wrote:
> > Yeah, now I'm replying to my own post because I have something to add that I
> > don't completely understand.
> >
> > For some reason, I began to think that there might be some hidden boot block
> > or something that might not get included in the partition copying, so I
> > figured what the heck?!  Why not try out a crazy idea - nothing else has
> > worked!  So what I did was I used the original Sight Seer CD to install
> > Geexbox 1.0 onto the 4 gig hard drive, partitioning it to just 600 meg, and
> > let it do the install.  Did a test boot - booted as expected(without the
> > auto-play).  Then I took the hd out and slaved it to the 30 Gig hd in
> > another system, ran the GPartEd util and copied the partition from the 30
> > Gig onto the 4 gig hd (WITHOUT first deleting the existing 600meg partition
> > on the 4 gig hd).  Everything copied fine, and I put the 4 Gig hd in the
> > IPAQ -- and viola! it's booting and running perfectly.  Question now is:
> > why?!?  :/
>
> Your suspicion was on the nose.  On IBM systems, there are at least
> two pieces of data that exist at the beginning of the hard disk, prior
> to any partition: The boot sector and partition table.  Without usable
> data (i.e. a working bootloader) on the boot sector, the computer
> won't be able to boot your OS.
>
> --
Wouldn't formating the drive first eliminate this issue?
Casey