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View Full Version : [ubuntu] Changing systems soon: what to back up?


chromedome
March 27th, 2011, 07:24 PM
Greetings, all:

I've been around here since summer 2007, and haven't posted much because I can usually find what I want. Forgive me for covering what must be well-trodden ground, but I'm reluctant to try pulling the information I need from multiple threads of different vintage.

I'm currently running Lucid on an elderly Celeron-powered Optiplex GX 270. It runs... adequately. I'll shortly be inheriting an HP DV-9000-series laptop, which I will be setting up with a clean install of Lucid.

My question is, how do I go about transferring my files and such to the new system? I don't begrudge the time involved in re-installing my programs, but if possible I'd like to replicate my existing setup on the new computer. I've just installed Back in Time to generate the backups with, but I don't know which directories to earmark.

I'm not a power user by any means, but I go back to DOS 3.0 so you don't have to dumb it down too terribly either.

I appreciate any help that's offered. I'm a freelancer and my computer hosts my business, so I want to do this right.
Enigmapond
March 27th, 2011, 07:30 PM
This thread may be of some help. It worked well for me...just have to make sure you add any PPA's that you have added to the old one to the new one...
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=8827372#post8827372

Cheers!
mikewhatever
March 27th, 2011, 07:50 PM
You could clone the Ubuntu partition or everything on the hard drive over to the new one. Clonezilla is one such tool.
eddier
March 27th, 2011, 11:00 PM
Whip the Hard drive out the old laptop and pop it into one of those usb connectable drive caddies. Connect to your new machine(make your new installation first) and transfer away.

eddie
chromedome
April 8th, 2011, 01:13 AM
Thank you all for your input.

Enigmapond, that was very useful.

I don't want to clone my drive, because (IMHO) the beauty of moving to a new machine is leaving behind much of the dross that's accumulated in the metaphorical attic.

However, if there is a similarly quick CLI option for grabbing configuration files, documents etc, I'd be delighted to hear about it.