Best way to move a system to a larger HDD.

[pnunn]

Guys,

I'm trying to move my laptop system (which is running really well) to a new, larger, HDD.

I tried clonezilla, but after several failed attempts have give up on that (it seems to continually throw errors regardless of copying partitions or whole disks, using images or not). I've checked the soruce disk over and over and have no issues there.

I'm pushing out to an esata disk (and have tried several targets with the same outcome).

I'm currently burning a nightly build and was now going to just put on a new 12.04 and then copy back my /home and reinstall the software, but as its now late, I thought I'd ask the question first and will check in the morning to see if anyone can suggest a better way.

Thanks heaps.

Peter.

[oshunluvr]

Honestly, I would be easier to re-install and then copy over your data. You could dump a list of install packages on your running system, re-install from the list copy over any editied configs and your home and be done.

dpkg --get-selections
dpkg --set-selections

Otherwise, you can use dd for a direct copy of an entire hard drive or partition but the sizes would have to be nearly exactly the same.

I wonder why you're having so much trouble with clonzilla? Most everyone I now who's used it has had success...

[SecretCode]

What kind of Clonezilla errors? I've done this successfully. (Although depending on the drive hardware (old), sometimes very slowly.)

Still, Mr luvr's suggestion of reinstalling is good.

[woodsmoke]

Hi Pnunn

I'll reply in two ways.

A) I, personally, do not put anything on the hard drive in terms of data, it all goes to a usb stick and then later to an external hd or a cd.

So, that would be the just "install new" but that won't give your tweaks or your favourite software.

B) Another option is what is known as "Remastersys".

It gives one the option of completely recreating the os, including data, but it requires a large empty space on the hard drive( all those music streams and videos take up space! ) in which the clone can reside and then one makes an installable cd from that. Again, it gives you everything back. You load it like a live cd and install.

But, the more workable option, for me, at least, is to make what the fellow(his name is "Fragadelic") calls a "distributable live cd/dvd". That is like you tweaking the OS to what you want all your friends to have, like wallpapers, themes, installed apps, etc. You then load it like a live cd and install. That is much smaller, usually, and again makes a "clone" of the OS but just without your data.

It has always worked for me and is included in some distros as a standard package.

Here is the website:

http://www.remastersys.com/

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

Otherwise, you can use dd for a direct copy of an entire hard drive or partition but the sizes would have to be nearly exactly the same.

If you're dd-ing from a smaller drive onto a larger one, this is less of a worry.

Imagine that you have this layout on a 160 GiB drive:

* /dev/sda1: 40 GiB
* /dev/sda2: 10 GiB
* /dev/sda3: 110 GiB

I would recommend this route:

1. Place the new (completely blank) drive in the computer
2. Place the old drive in an external USB enclosure and connect this to the computer
3. Boot the computer with a GParted USB
4. Run sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sda

Now for some comments:

1. Writing to the new drive using the PC's on-board controller is faster than via USB
4. Because the old drive is now in an external enclosure, its name will change from sda to sdb.

Once this is done, the new drive will have the following layout. Imagine that it's a 320 GiB drive:

* /dev/sda1: 40 GiB
* /dev/sda2: 10 GiB
* /dev/sda3: 110 GiB
* unused: 160 GiB

Reboot with the GParted USB again. Here's a list of things you can now do with the GParted GUI utility:

* expand /dev/sda3 into the unused space
* create another partition on the unused space
* make more space for /dev/sda1 by moving the other two partitions over to the right

[pnunn]

This looks like a fantastic piece of software woodsmoke, however, I can't install it.

I've added the repo and key to my system, but when I try and do an apt-get update I'm getting an error

W: Failed to fetch http://www.remastersys.com/ubuntu/di...cise/InRelease Unable to find expected entry 'main/source/Sources' in Release file (Wrong sources.list entry or malformed file)

my sources file has

deb http://www.remastersys.com/ubuntu precise main
deb-src http://www.remastersys.com/ubuntu precise main

Any idea? Think I'll have to blow it away and start again anyway due to time, but I'd love to have a go with this.

Thanks all.

Peter.

[Snowhog]

Remastersys doesn't have packages for Precise. That said, you could use the Debian squeeze repository:

deb http://www.remastersys.com/squeeze/

[pnunn]

OK, tried that, but now have dependancy issues trying to install the package.

I installed squeezefs and unionfs tools etc, and looked for a live-initramsf package with no success.

The errors are

Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
remastersys : Depends: live-initramfs but it is not installable
Depends: live-config-sysvinit but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Sorry for the hassles.. any more ideas?

Ta

Peter.

[Snowhog]

This is the problem when a package hasn't been updated/packaged for the release of Kubuntu one is using. Okay, so using the squeeze repo doesn't work. Try replacing it with ubuntu:

deb http://www.remastersys.com/ubuntu/ (just replace squeeze with ubuntu)

If it works, it is an older version of remastersys (version 2.0.12-1).

[woodsmoke]

I'm sorry guys, too many grandkids for Memorial Day, too much sun time at the genulman's club pool with the grandkids, too little space in the apartment, too many hot dogs and hamburgs, too many model rockets in the trees, in fact, tooooo much! so I didn't notice, again, I apologize.

woodsmoke

[pnunn]

OK, got it thanks... needed to use deb http://www.remastersys.com//ubuntu oneiric main

Now to see if I can make it work.

Thanks again.

Peter.

[woodsmoke]

Please keep us updated on how things work.

woodsmoke

[pnunn]

Sounds like a great day woodsmoke.

I've given up on this though sadly, I can't seem to get enough excluded to make an image small enough to burn. It would be nice if you could just mirror to a disk, make it bootable and install to the laptop from there instead, but I guess I'll just blow it way and start again.

Peter.

[woodsmoke]

K
woodsmoke

[Frank616]

Steve:

OK, I'm trying it now....

GParted does not appear to require a password for sudo, which is good, as I didn't know what it would be anyway.

In my case, it was from sdc (in the external USB enclosure) that I was copying to sda, as I have two drives in this machine anyway. Fortunately, they are different sizes, and it was obvious which one was which. sdb is my 1.5 TB data drive.

Now, the answer to this next question may be obvious, but will GParted show the updated partitions on the new drive as soon as dd is finished its work? Or will I have to restart GParted? I'm working from the terminal within GParted to run the dd command.

Will expanding /dev/sda3 leave the contents of sda3 untouched? With Kubuntu 12.04 on a drive that also has Windows XP on it, I am guessing that I'm going to have more partitions. Is it still sda3 that I want to expand in order to give the most room to Kubuntu?

Oddly enough, the old drive (160 GB) stopped making the awful noises as soon as I put it in the external hard drive enclosure. However, I don't trust it anymore, so better copy everything off it now while I have a chance.

Thanks for any insight you can offer.

Frank.