[vox-tech] I'm over my head - need a cookbook for transfering system to new disks

[David Spencer, Internet Handyman]

I'm hoping that somebody can help me by directing me to a step-by-step
cookbook of some sort for what I'm trying to do. Here's the summary:

We've got a Dell SC1425 1U server. The system has dual 300GB SATA drives
that I've configured in a software RAID 1. It's running CentOS 4.5 and
is pretty much up to date. We've also got Plesk installed on it and
it's purpose to exist is to host websites.

We recently got this idea to replace the 300GB drives with 500GB drives.
My programmer and I thought that the best way to accomplish this would
be to use Linux Ghost to copy the contents of the drives. So we pulled
one of the 300's and replaced it with the 500. Then we ghosted the 300
to the 500. Next we replaced the 300 with the other 500 and used ghost
again to copy the data on the first 500 to the second. We rebooted the
system and it worked! Well, almost.

The problem was that Linux Ghost did a fantastic job of duplicating
the exact dimensions of the 300 drives onto the 500. So we had a system
with partitions that were only 300GB in size. Obviously we wanted to
take advantage of all that extra space. And that's where things went
terribly wrong.

We've tried a number of things from using Linux Ghost to expand the
partition to using fdisk and dd to redefine the partitions and then
copy the data from one of the 300's using an external USB 2.0 drive.
Nothing works. Where did we go wrong?

Your assistance is much appreciated,


-- Dave Spencer, PageWeavers