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View Full Version : [ubuntu] Swapping Hard Drives, Moving OS To New HDD



OKKARE
March 11th, 2009, 12:50 AM
I need to move everything on my current (40 gigabyte :( ) hard drive to my new ("new" 80 GB) drive. This includes the the Ubuntu OS and all other files. What's the easiest way to do this?

upchucky
March 11th, 2009, 01:05 AM
it would be great if you can run both drives at the same time, then no need to move anything. If this can not be done then back up all your important files, lets say to a cdrom, usb stick, DVD, or a second pc if you have it networked. partition the new drive with a ubuntu partition a home partition and a swap partition. swap is typically about half the size of the amount of ram on the sys. ubuntu should be happy with about 15gigs and home can have the rest for all your files. then reinstall ubuntu and then restore the backed up files to the home partition

OKKARE
March 11th, 2009, 03:54 AM
I guess if I have no other choice...

Neo_The_User
March 11th, 2009, 05:05 AM
Well you can do it by transferring over the partitions but I'd need a lot of info on your HDDs and writing a guide would take awhile.

Terminal:



man fdisk
man mount

bpalone
March 11th, 2009, 05:30 AM
Another thought would be to do a complete backup with Mondo. Information on Mondo can be found here: http://www.mondorescue.org/

It appears that you can restore to a new disk of a different size. It does require a bit of understanding how to set up a new disk from the command line though. There is plenty of information available online, but you may want another computer available so you can check such information while in the middle of the project.

Mondo is in the repository, so it is an easy install. There may be an easier method out there.

Neo_The_User
March 11th, 2009, 05:32 AM
Another thought would be to do a complete backup with Mondo. Information on Mondo can be found here: http://www.mondorescue.org/

It appears that you can restore to a new disk of a different size. It does require a bit of understanding how to set up a new disk from the command line though. There is plenty of information available online, but you may want another computer available so you can check such information while in the middle of the project.

Mondo is in the repository, so it is an easy install. There may be an easier method out there.

Whats easier than installing it via repo? Not that I really care but I'm interested. I compile everything from source anyways.

bpalone
March 11th, 2009, 06:24 AM
Whats easier than installing it via repo? Not that I really care but I'm interested. I compile everything from source anyways.

My bad construction. I was referring to the original question of moving the system and files to a new home. I shall be at the wall for my 40 lashings with a wet noodle.;)

OKKARE
March 11th, 2009, 10:20 AM
Thanks for the replies. I wish I had waited for them before going ahead! I backed up all my files onto my Hackintosh.

Then this happened:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1093081

bpalone
March 29th, 2009, 05:49 AM
An update for anyone reading this at a later date.

I found a mention of using a Gparted Live CD to move the system over. I have since done this myself and it works great and is really painless. Just use the copy and paste function in Gparted. Don't remember the thread I found it in, but do recall mentioning to check UID and fstab (if my memory is correct). I did not have any problems and didn't check anything other than repairing Grub.

combatwombat_nz
March 29th, 2009, 07:05 AM
Or try the brilliant CloneZilla live cd. It is for cloning disks or partitions to another or to an image or to a network. No PC techie should be without it.

robert shearer
March 29th, 2009, 07:37 AM
Or try making a remaster live cd of your running install with remastersys

http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/ubuntu.html

Then swap drives and use the Remastersys disk to reinstall.