Hi,
 I'd just like to confirm this before I make a mistake and hurt my system.

 The existing system drive is /dev/sda:

/dev/sda3 is root
/dev/sda1 is boot

That's all there is.

 Using the stage4 tar I idea I added a drive which is /dev/sdb and
has these partitions of interest

/dev/sdb3 will be new root
/dev/sdb1 will be new boot
/dev/sdb5 will be new var
/dev/sdb6 will be new video

 I've mounted the new drive under /mnt like this:

/dev/sdb3   /mnt/backups        [[[This will be the new / ]]]
/dev/sdb1   /mnt/backups/boot
/dev/sdb5   /mnt/backups/var
/dev/sdb6   /mnt/backups/video

So this essentially creates a new file system that will eventually
take over when I boot from this drive tomorrow. (Hopefully)

Now, in the video directory I have my stage4 tar file which I want to
untar into this new drive and not, hopfully, over my old drive. Will
the following work?

cd /mnt/backups
tar xjpf video/Sector9-stage4-2008.05.07-custom.tar.bz2

I'm just trying to be really careful here. I think this is all an
extension of how we build a Gentoo machine by untaring a stage3 file
but I'm doing it on a system that's live and I don't want to mess up
the exiting drive.

If this is correct then I'll chroot into the new environment for
testing, adding grub, etc., and then do a BIOS change to boot off of
the second drive and hopefully be live.

Thanks,
Mark
--
gentoo-user@(protected)