Cloning RAID drive to new single drive

[yoda]

I've just bought a new 500GB hard-drive to replace my software RAID 5 array of 3 x 80GB drives (which will then be moved to other computers as individual drives).

Anyone got any ideas on how I can clone the software array to the single new drive?  I have enough SATA ports and SATA power plugs to have all 4 running at once.

I could just reinstall Linux on the new drive, then (assuming I can access the RAID array)  move some files across (like the /home volume) but I'd probably end up messing everything up, losing my email database, browser cookies, passwords etc.

[WikiWill]

Is it just the data you want?  You could use dd with the RAID volume as input and the new disk device as output.  I can't remember the commands to make it bootable - mkboot is all I have and I think that's Solaris or just wrong...

You might need to be a bit careful, or you'll boot up with a volume manager expecting to see devices that are no longer valid, and it could behave unpredictably.

[yoda]

Yeah, basically I need what's in my /home volume and all the BOINC data.  Not too fussed about the rest (e.g. programs - I can always reinstall what's needed).

Talking of volume manager, yes I expect cloning will probably not work that well since the current setup has a small boot volume on one drive, with the rest on the RAID volume (large partition on each of the 3 drives).  Hmmm.  Bite bullet time

[WikiWill]

I guess /home is easy; something like:

cd /home
tar cpf - * | (cd /new/directory; tar xf -)

That's what I would use on Solaris but not sure about your Linux.  Tar may not handle files larger than x GB gracefully so check that.  I think x = 8.

[Mike Mitchell]

I'm not sure dd would be the best choice. It is supposed to take a bit by bit image of the source isn't it? If that's the case the image in RAID will be a bunch of "dirty" pages that file system wouldn't recognise.

I think tar or cpio would be the best choice, as tar was invented for this type of work and cpio was converted to it.

Is there any ghosting software for Linux? A Google might find one.