Disk problems - continuing saga

[glow2797 at bigpond.net.au]

Still having problems installing a new disk. Have posted before and post was changed to question about "cable select", meant to get back before this but have been trying different things and as PC is a gateway to Internet have not been able to post.

Anyway thanks for replies previously.

Have got myself into some problems, probably self-inflicted but suppose that's how you learn!

Bob,
Tried installing grub like was mentioned in reply ie get into "linux rescue" and "chroot" then do a "grub-install". Did not work when I tried previously but I didn't do it exactly the way you mentioned. Installed both disks and new one was on /dev/hdb, done a "grub-install /dev/hdb" but this didn't seem to fix problem.
Mentioned to a friend who suggested that if problem was in copying records I might be able to do a "dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb" - tried this but assumed that I should copy "dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hdb1" (location of /boot directory). At this stage things took a turn for the worst, don't know if it was related but couldn't then boot the original disk. Wondered about this and think may just be a coincidence and maybe disk became corrupted with constant handling?

Anyway now have to try and get original disk back. 
Can mount both disks with "linux rescue" and tried to copy files over but getting an error on new disk saying "Duplicate LABEL=/" and new disk not booting. Decided to find out if new disk was faulty and installed RH8.0 with disks which I have and this went ok. Mounted new and old and tried to copy from old disk to new disk but think I had problems with /etc/fstab as install on new disk was allocating partitions differently (getting "kernel panic cannot find init"). 

Have 2 questions.
1. Am going to proceed with install and copy all from the old disk to the new disk into a new directory (original is 40G and new is 120G). Will then install into /var /home /usr immediately but will install selectively into /etc (not /etc/fstab). Is this a good strategy and if so any tips on what files are important for /etc (eg lot of network info I need to transfer). Use Apache, vsftp, Samba and ssh amongst other things.

2. Above strategy (if it works) doesn't answer the question of why I couldn't transfer to the new disk, would love to know for future reference!! 
I am suspicious of something which is done by the new install every time but have no idea how I could have emulated this, anyone any answers...
   On new install from RH8.0 disks it installs 6 partitions something like following
                        /dev/hda1    /boot   ext3
                        /dev/hda2    /usr    ext3
                        /dev/hda3    /home   ext3
                        /dev/hda4    Extended partition type=f "DOS 95 Extended"  <<<<
                        /dev/hda5    /dev/shm ext3
                        /dev/hda6    /var    ext3
                        /dev/hda7    swap
In /etc/fstab there are the normal entries and an entry for /dev/shm which is allocated as tmpfs.
Does this have something to do with why I couldn't mount new disk. Was able to allocate as a type f partition by using t command in fdisk but would this be enough as I never formatted extended partition and only done this after I had allocated as an extended??

Bit wordy but have tried to give enough info (have left out the more colorful language which I have used over the past days)!!

Thanks 

Gordon Low