this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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Migrating a linux install to a different drive (lemmy.world)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by Presi300@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.world
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The title pretty much speaks for itself... I have a linux install that I've spent a considerable time configuring, which is unfortunately installed on a drive that's starting to show signs of dying.

My question is: how, if there is a way, can I migrate said linux install over to a different drive, while preserving all the configurations and such.

EDIT: Thank you to everyone who commented! I made the transfer, using dd and it went mostly smoothly, even if it did take a while.

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[–] LunchMoneyThief@links.hackliberty.org 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I usually use

dd status=progress conv=sync,noerror bs=64k if=/path/to/source/drive of=/path/to/destination/drive

Take a reading of the drive health first with something like smartctl and if it has a lot of failing attributes, consider lowering the block size to something rather smaller like bs=512.

Edit: To elaborate, using the sync and noerror arguments will instruct dd to ignore errors and continue in the event of read failures, while allocating zeroes to the remainder of the block space. Which is also why smaller block sizes are better for potentially failing drives. The copy will take longer, but a single error won't take large swaths of data with it.