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Sindi Keesan wrote:
>
> could we put in a secnod (50MB) hard drive, format it as 
> the fourth primary partition, 

That is not possible.  The drive will be seen by Linux
according to which IDE interface it is on and whether
it is master or slave.  You could then put a fourth
(or first or second or third) primary partition on that
drive, but it will have the designation of that drive 
(hdb or hdc or hdd) not of the primary drive (hda).

> and then simply copy ALL the files from the existing 
> linux partition to that one and boot to that one 

Yes, copying an entire filesystem from one drive to
another is possible (using tar).  It is also possible 
to ghost the entire drive (including DOS partition 
and MBR) using dd.

> (modify the batch file for loadlin)?  

If the root partition has a different designation in
the new drive, you will need to edit the root parameter
for loadlin (on DOS partition).  You will also need to
edit /etc/fstab (on root Linux partition).

> Or do we need to reinstall everything from scratch?

No.

> Also can we then transfer such a hard drive to another 
> computer with an existing drive that has DOS on it, 
> as a quick way to set up linux for several computers?  

Yes.

Cheers,
Steven