Clonezilla for Dummies?

[C.S.Cameron]

537MB + 538MB + 79GB + 79GB is greater than 120GB.

Are you running Disks and dd from a Live Ubuntu USB?

Running from the source disk will not work.

I assumed by HDD size the computer boots Legacy mode, if it boots UEFI mode see sudodus' link.

Edit:
@ajgreeny: Ahh yes, 537MB + 538MB + 79GB is less than 120GB. Good thinking.

[ajgreeny]

After all this angst and uncertainty in this thread I begin to wonder if it might not be many times simpler and quicker to backup all your personal files most of which are in your home and then simply install a new OS on the new SSD and restore those backed up home files.

I realise you will have to install any packages that are not in the default install but this may still be a faster way to get to your wanted end-point.

@C.S.Cameron
The disk size problem you mention will, I suspect be because this is a BIOS disk and partition 5 is a logical partition sitting in partition 3, an extended partition.

[mastablasta]

Example: menu choice of computer processors: AMD64, i686-pae, or i686. I'm pretty sure that it's not an AMD64 because my computer has an "Intel Inside" sticker. And I do know that it's 64-bit. But that's the limit of what I know about the processor.

AMD64 = 64 bit CPU - AMD64 is in image name because AMD was the first to have such CPU on consumer market.
i686-pae = 32 bit CPU, but has 4 GB or more ram. it needs PAE (Physical Address Extension) kernel to recognise more than 4 GB ram (up to 64GB). same thing on windows.
or i686 = 32 bit CPU but has less than 4 GB ram and maybe is so old (or has some other limitation put on the CPU by manufacturer - e.g. Pentium M) that it does not support PAE kernel .

I believe it is same for windows. you need to know what kind of version will run and forcing a 64bit one on 32bit machine won't work. and if you have winxp 32 bit home, you need to add windows pae kernel to get 4 Gb ram (even on windows this means 1 GB is reserved for OS functions)

aside from what others already said if you still want to do disk to disk then this is the step by step by clonezilla:
https://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc..._to_disk_clone

print and go -- step by step. no, interface is not the easiest.

i would do a new install on SSD and then just move over the data from hard disk. or you can buy a sata enclosure and use the hard disk as external data source. you need to setup trim on SSD.

[robert99999]

After I made my last post late last night (early this morning), I came to the same conclusion as the above two posts: Just do a new install on the new SSD, and then manually copy the other files over. So that's what I did. However, I then spent hours today trying to set my preferences the way I had them on my original HD. Even though I've only been using Ubuntu on this machine for two months, it's amazing how many settings I've modified in that time. And trying to remember where to change them wasn't easy: Settings? Tweaks? or somewhere else? But the real showstopper was that I found there was no simple way to get all of my bookmarks and login passwords transferred over from the old Firefox installation to the new one. Similar problem with my email client. Couldn't figure out how to restore all of my emails. I thought maybe I could find where these files were located on the old HD and copy them over, but when I tried to do that, Firefox immediately had a hissy fit.

So, I decided to have another look at cloning the drive. When I used "Show Applications" to find Gnome Disks again, I saw the "Startup Disk Creator" app which I'd never noticed before. All it needed was an iso image of the disk to be copied. So, I fired up Balena Etcher to do that (thinking I'd just burn it to a DVD), but then discovered that Etcher was quite happy to do a direct image copy from the HD to the SSD without the need to make an intermediate iso file. So I did that. Twenty minutes later, I had the my old HD cloned onto the new SSD, and another 15 minutes to verify it. The only minor hitch was that the partitions were exactly the same size as the old HD, so the new SSD had an extra 40GB unassigned. All I had to do was run Gnome disks and expand the ext4 partition to take up the extra space. That was a two second operation. I'm now running from the new SSD and everything is exactly as I had it on the old HD, except of course the SSD is much much faster.

Thanks to everyone who responded. It is much appreciated.

[CelticWarrior]

there was no simple way to get all of my bookmarks and login passwords transferred over from the old Firefox installation to the new one. Similar problem with my email client.

The easiest way is to use sync with a Firefox account.
Without it and manually you can always copy over and replace the hidden folder where such settings are stored: https://askubuntu.com/a/218451
Or https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...p-or-move-them

[ajgreeny]

I can only assume that if all your configurations did not transfer to the new installation that you moved all your data but did not move all the hidden files and folders from your old home to the new one.

About 99% of all my personal settings and configs, including all the firefox and thunderbird folders and set up, including bookmarks, extensions, etc etc are transferred by moving all the hidden folders including the .mozilla and .thunderbird folders.
I use a separate /home partition so on reinstall everything is automatically used by the new OS; worth considering if you now have the space available.
Some users leave the home folder in the root partition but then use symbolic links to all the data which is in a separate /data partition; easy to do but a little more involved than a separate /home partition.

Assuming you still have all the old hidden folders from your /home you should still be able to restore all the old configs easily enough.

[robert99999]

I can only assume that if all your configurations did not transfer to the new installation that you moved all your data but did not move all the hidden files and folders from your old home to the new one.

Good point. When I did the transfer I just did a Select All, and dragged them over, but probably forgot to have the Show Invisibles option selected. Since I'm still quite new to Linux, I'm not yet familiar with the places where Linux keeps its various files