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Migrating a linux install to a different drive (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 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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[-] bloodfart@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago

I’m glad you got it sorted with dd.

One thing people don’t often realize about dd is that it copies all the data from one drive to the other, including uuids that were written when the old drives filesystem were created.

For that reason it excels at cloning one’s boot disk, because when the old drive gets removed from the pc, the clone drives os says at some point during the boot process “okay, let’s mount the filesystem with uuid ABC123 at /“ and it works.

Dd is also not the best tool for cloning disk that you intend to leave hooked up because if you do it’ll put the poor host os in a “I’m seein’ double here, four spidermen!” Type situation.

[-] Presi300@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

I was also one of those people who didn't realize that it copied UUIDs. I only figured that out, because I imagined that I'd have to update the fstab to point to the UUIDs of the partitions on the new drive.

this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
26 points (96.4% liked)

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