Data Dumping from disk to disk

[RedKennedy]

A friend told me I could data dump all the stuff from one disk to another in order to avoid repeating installation, setup, etc. Will that work? I have Lunar on hdb1, and ArchLinux all over hda, and want to use Lunar primarily, but hdb is only about 3.5gb, while hda is 20 or so, and I have to get all my files, music, movies etc onto the disk, and I don't want to play dual disk bounce around....So If I backup all the files, format hda with xfs (the fs i have on hdb1) and run dd if=/dev/hdb1 of=/dev/hda1 will that work?

[sofar]

remember though that dd only works when the filesystems are exactly the same size (up to 1 byte exactly) otherwise you have to use tar or cp to transfer files over.

[Guest]

ok....i just installed it, haven't done anything with it...so im fine with reinstalling.

[lunar_mike]

Its usually safer to make a backup anyways ( if you have the space )
you never know when you'll do something horrid then have a non funtional PC