Moving harddisk with Linux installation to a different machine. 7371

I've done it. You will want to think carefully about how your parbreastions are set up, and about where you put your grub, and about where the second disk will go. For example, some IDE controllers get very confused with Linux and LILO or grub and can keep telling you thatdev-hdc is reallydev-hda, because they reverse the order of drives listed for various reasons. It's easy to work out, but you want a good installation or rescue CD around for dealing with it.

The big switch that would kill you is going from an x86 processor to an x8664 CPU, namely the very nice AMD 64-bit processors. The old kernel and hardware should *work* as long as you didn't custom-compile the kernel to rest and throw out too many drivers, and the old i686 or i586 kernel should work with the 64-bit CPU running in its emulation mode, but you'll lose all that nifty performance.

The second big switch is the problem with any new machine: are its components really Linux compatible, alone and in combination? A machine that is known to work, listed at a reputable Linux website should be very stable and reliable for both Windows and Linux.

Yes, most rescue or install CD's with rescue options will find and mount the available disks, say atmnt-sysimage: then you can edit the mnt-sysimage-etc-fstab andmnt-sysimage-etc-mtab as needed, edit mnt-sysimage-boot-grub-grub.conf as needed, and do a "chrootmnt-sysimage grub-instlldev-hda" or wherever you want the MBR stashed. I've written scripts to do exactly this sort of thing for network installations of Linux, for approximately 15,000 machines (including test machines and some that had to be replaced or done twice).

Practice makes it easier, but you seem to have a handle on the basics.