do i need to reinstall

[Kevin Kinsey]

jrrelay at juno.com wrote:

>i recently bought a new and larger hard drive for my computer.  i put it 
>the machine as '/dev/ad3'.  while educating myself about this new drive,
>i installed freebsd 5.3 on one of the  slices. i am ready to eliminate
>the old 'ad0' and want to move the new drive so it will become
>'/dev/ad0'.  will BSD operate in its new location without any changes to
>the configuration files?  perhaps '/etc/fstab',  and what else? or should
>i just reinstall freebsd after i have reconfigured the machine?
>jrrelay at juno.com
>  
>

Well, a reinstall would certainly work, but it's so "Windozy" ;-)

What does /etc/fstab look like now?  And maybe what
does `mount` say?

One thing is certain .... the new drive would need
the FreeBSD MBR (or another boot loader) at the
very least; you didn't mention where you were booting
from, (but I assume from the new disk?)

Worst case scenario:  you get to learn a lot about
the bootstrap process.  IIRC, that's currently chapter
12 in the Handbook (www.freebsd.org/handbook).

Good advice:  backup personal data, regardless
of what you choose to do....

Sorry I can't give you more help, but as a relative newb
myself, I'll have to leave the real answers to the "real men"
out there.

Kevin Kinsey