I want to get a new computer next month. I've been using an old computer (a 1.5Ghz AMD) for a while now. It has 1GB ram and a nice nvidia card with 256MB DDR3 memory (700mhz clock).
But since I switched to kde two months ago, it's been overheating rapidly and 1GB is hardly enough KDE (Gnome used to never use more than ~160MB ram).
I've been wanting to get a new computer for a while now but I don't want to lose my current ArchLinux installation which I've had since 2006. I rebuilt almost all packages after gcc 4.6 came out (a huge effort as it required some patching). Both my hard disks use LUKS encryption (apart from boot and swap partitions) so this is a pr0 Linux setup.
My current hard disks are both IDE. I already moved the hard disks once in 2007 from a Intel to this AMD.
Linux will continue to boot on a new computer as long as the cpu will run 32bit software with i686 optimizations.

Will I be able to install my current hard disks on a new computer? If I understand correctly, new computers all use serial ATA. If not, I'd rather stick to this computer.
My old computer doesn't have SATA connectors. It only has IDE.
If I understand correctly from what you are saying, new computers support both IDE and SATA?
Definitely. SATA does not eliminate IDE. It just makes things easier and faster. Generally speaking, any board supports 2 IDE drives and 4 SATA drives. By the way, what do you plan to do with your old system once the new one is in?
SATA provides all the features of IDE, is smaller, much faster, and saves board space. My new motherboard (ASUS P6X58D) does not have IDE. We are already in the 3rd version of SATA since SATA I was released around 2004. So IDE is being
phased out. However, IDE to SATA converters are in abundance. I have one inside a compact PC (IBM ThinkCentre) I own. It is a small (tiny) board and requires a molex (power) plug from the power supply along with, of course, a SATA connector.
Isnt there a way to make an image of your HDD partitions? Then clone the images to the new HDD partitions. Most new boards do not have IDE connectors anymore.
MrClass wroteIsnt there a way to make an image of your HDD partitions? Then clone the images to the new HDD partitions. Most new boards do not have IDE connectors anymore.
It is not guaranteed that the image will boot on different hardware. Cloning from IDE -> SATA (or the other way round) may not work. It can work if you set "Legacy mode" for SATA in the BIOS, but I can't guarantee it.

If you are trying to boot your cloned Windows image on a computer with different hardware, you better forget about it, unless you use a free Microsoft tool called sysprep before cloning, which will put the system in a state where it will be able to boot on different hardware.

I am assuming you are trying to clone a working Windows system. For cloning data partitions only, it's much easier. I am also assuming there is no encryption involved.

For cloning, I think the most efficient way is to boot some kind of linux distro (you can boot an Ubuntu live CD) then use the command line tool dd for cloning. If you tweak the "bs" parameter (no it's not bullshit but block size :) ) of dd you can get a better copy speed. The command would look something like:
dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdb1 bs=32000
With "if" (stands for "input file") the partition you want to copy, and "of" the destination partition. You'll probably need to read more about dd. There are other graphical tools, like the disk partitioner (forgot it's name) that can do that, but I like to keep things simple.
HDD cloned images do work on different hardware. In the case of Windows though, you'd have to boot into Safe Mode and delete the VGA driver. The rest can be simply replaced when inside the admin account.
On Linux, the image will boot to new hardware. udev redetects all hardware again at every boot. This installation began on a Intel P4, then the root hard disk was moved to an AMD and ArchLinux booted like nothing had changed. Then before the root hard disk died, I got a new one, dd'ed it to the new disk, reinstalled grub and booted the new disk.

It's a matter of whether I can attach/boot a IDE disk on a new computer.

I have a empty /etc/modprobe.d/ Only crappy distributions put rules there by default. Otherwise, why use udev?
This is Linux, not windows ;)

MrClass, where do I put those images? my hard disks are 160GB and full of tons of documents, source code tarballs, etc..
An external hdd perhaps? You can purchase a portable external hdd (powered by USB) for 70$ or so (500GB, of course smaller capacities cost less).

By the way, 160GB for me is nothing :P.

Try backing up 3TB of data :) (had to get 5 1TB disks and deploy RAID 5 to get 3TB safe storage space)
ok, I got a new computer.
cat /proc/cpu says

model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU E7500 @ 2.93GHz

a nvidia geforce 210 card (I tried the 220 and I think 240 but they kept making xorg-server segfault).

the computer has 4GB ram but for some reason, Archlinux only sees 3GB. not sure why...

I also moved the two IDE hard disks and installed a SATA dvd writer so I can watch DVDs. Linux simply booted like nothing had changed. Of course KDE is now faster.
nuclearcat wroteuse 64bit :-)
Oh ok, that explains it :)
a month later
hussam wroteI want to get a new computer next month. I've been using an old computer (a 1.5Ghz AMD) for a while now. It has 1GB ram and a nice nvidia card with 256MB DDR3 memory (700mhz clock).
But since I switched to kde two months ago, it's been overheating rapidly and 1GB is hardly enough KDE (Gnome used to never use more than ~160MB ram).
I've been wanting to get a new computer for a while now but I don't want to lose my current ArchLinux installation which I've had since 2006. I rebuilt almost all packages after gcc 4.6 came out (a huge effort as it required some patching). Both my hard disks use LUKS encryption (apart from boot and swap partitions) so this is a pr0 Linux setup.
My current hard disks are both IDE. I already moved the hard disks once in 2007 from a Intel to this AMD.
Linux will continue to boot on a new computer as long as the cpu will run 32bit software with i686 optimizations.

Will I be able to install my current hard disks on a new computer? If I understand correctly, new computers all use serial ATA. If not, I'd rather stick to this computer.
you can clone your harddrive with acronise (download via torrent) and simly make a clone of your old hardisk on your new harddisk :D
watch this vid and you'll get what im saying
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Wu95L0LHW4
btw i recommend using a new hardrive since 5+year old hardrives will get tired and be a reasone for performance loss ,and also there is 60% chance of Data loss
thanks, already got a new computer with a serial ATA disk and moved my linux installation to the new disk.