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Sindi Keesan wrote:
>
> Why do you say that we cannot copy the contents of hda3 
> (current linux partition on an 8G hard drive) to hdb 
> (only partition on a 400MB second hard drive on the same 
> controller) 

hdb is *not* a partition.  It is a drive.  If you somehow
managed to write to /dev/hdb, you would overwrite the boot
sector.

Note:  if you were ghosting (rather than copying), you could 
specify /dev/hdb (the drive).  For example, you could transfer 
the entire contents of /dev/hda to /dev/hdb (including the MBR).  
Naturally, /dev/hdb would have to be at least as big as /dev/hda

> Are hard drives always numbered 

The harddrives are never numbered.  It is the partitions that
have numbers.

> even if there is only one on the controller?  

If there is only one HD (presumably master) on the controller
(presumably primary IDE), the drive will always be /dev/hda
and the partitions on that drive will always be /dev/hda?

> Unfortunately we cannot do that in this case as it would give
> us five primary partitions, 

The four primary partition limit applies to a single drive.
Every drive in the system can have its own set of four primary 
partitions and they can all be mounted simultaneously.

Cheers,
Steven