Thax OErjan, I'm cloning linux-all the distros I mentioned above. I already have a grub set up on my 1st disk and it's pretty easy to edit menu.1st. The problem or concern I have is if I try to move all the different distros they obviously won't be in the same partition order that they are now. (I already have one install on the 1st disk-there's plenty of room on the disk-but I don't know if the bootloaders will work right. i.e in installing these system I installed the loader (lilo or grub) to the partition instead of the MBR so in my lead distro I can just use rootnoverify and chainload from there.

In my experiance when I've moved a partition the boot fails it might start but something goes wrong. Sorry for the long reply but that's my best explanation of where I'm at. And thanks again for the cp -ax command-argument. Perhaps I would be better off trying to install to a same size hard drive which means buying another drive. (?)