Best Way to Upgrade on New Drive?

[checksquid]

Hi all,
I've been happily using Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) on a Lenovo T61 laptop, dual booting with Vista. My hard drive is getting full, so I'm going to replace it with a bigger one. I figured that it might make sense to update Ubuntu while I'm at it (and switch to Windows 7, too). I'm not a very advanced user, so I have a few quick questions:

1) Would it make more sense to do a clean install of Ubuntu 9.10 on the new drive, or to clone the old drive and then do a series of incremental updates?

2) If I do a clean install and do fresh installations of all of the applications on the old drive, will it then be possible to just copy my home folder to the new drive? Or could the home folder include configuration files that will not work on the new version of Ubuntu (or some other problem I'm not thinking of)? Are there other things I should be sure to move over to the new drive?

3) Should I switch to the 64 bit version? I have 2GB of RAM and a Core 2 Duo processor at 2.10GHz.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

[phillw]

Hi all,
I've been happily using Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) on a Lenovo T61 laptop, dual booting with Vista. My hard drive is getting full, so I'm going to replace it with a bigger one. I figured that it might make sense to update Ubuntu while I'm at it (and switch to Windows 7, too). I'm not a very advanced user, so I have a few quick questions:

1) Would it make more sense to do a clean install of Ubuntu 9.10 on the new drive, or to clone the old drive and then do a series of incremental updates?

2) If I do a clean install and do fresh installations of all of the applications on the old drive, will it then be possible to just copy my home folder to the new drive? Or could the home folder include configuration files that will not work on the new version of Ubuntu (or some other problem I'm not thinking of)? Are there other things I should be sure to move over to the new drive?

3) Should I switch to the 64 bit version? I have 2GB of RAM and a Core 2 Duo processor at 2.10GHz.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Hi,

This is IMHO - others may have other ways ...

Firstly, 8.04 is an LTS, there is 8.04.4 due out at the end of January, in readiness for transferring to the next LTS, 10.04. - You may want to wait until then.

Assuming time is pressing - I'd go for a clean install of 9.10 - It is quite different in many ways to 8.04 was - and will be pretty straight forward to move to 10.04.

1) Boot off a 9.10 LiveCD in 'try without altering my computer' mode and ensure things like screen resolution, audio Wi-Fi / networking either work immediately - or you have the instructions to hand to solve them.

2) Get an external caddy for your existing hard drive - the usb ones are quite cheap & mean you will have ALL your data safe. (Amazon have some at good prices)

3) Do a clean installation.

Taking over your bookmarks, etc can possibly be done (not sure of your version of FFox) - So, do be careful about just copying over your /home area - it is doubtful that it will work.

Your general data (documents, audio, video) etc will be accesible from your old hard-drive via it's new caddy. This method has a further advantage ... Once you're SURE you've got everything off that you want - that drive will be handy for doing backups to :-)

As I say, just what I would do & will be doing with my laptop.

Regards,

Phill.

[checksquid]

Thanks for your thoughts, Phill! Just added a caddy to my hard drive order--that makes a lot of sense. :)