Backup and restore kubuntu on a smaller drive

[AndriusWild]

Hello,
I am wondering what is the best way to backup my / and /home and restore it on a new smaller drive. I guess 'dd' won't work for this. Please advise.

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[oshunluvr]

clonezilla or maybe rsync will do it. Can you install both drives at the same time?

You'll have to install GRUB o the new drive to be able to boot.

[AndriusWild]

clonezilla or maybe rsync will do it. Can you install both drives at the same time?

You'll have to install GRUB o the new drive to be able to boot.

Thank you for the comment.
I thought clonezilla is same as 'dd' which is sector by sector backup.
And isn't rsync just a smart copy tool? I don't think it will backup '/' while it is in use.

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[AndriusWild]

Can you install both drives at the same time?.

Yes I can.

I was thinking to install a fresh kubuntu on a new drive and then copy my existing installation over the fresh one and overwrite. Is it going to work?

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[jglen490]

If you install fresh on the new drive, and then copy your old / on top of the new /, your /etc/fstab will refer to the old drive and booting will be a problem.

On the other hand if you fresh install on the new drive, reinstall the old applications to the / on the new drive, and then ONLY copy the old /home on top of your new /home, you will recover all the application configs that you originally had. It's not complicated, but follow the steps.

[AndriusWild]

I am going to try Timeshift. Looks like it does exactly what I need.

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[jglen490]

If your /home is in a separate partition, then copy everything (/ and /home) to your new drive. Then do a fresh install making sure you only format the / partition and retain the /home. Once the fresh install is done, then just reinstall any apps that were not included in fresh install. You'll be back in business.

You can use rsync, it's just a "copy to target", not a pick up and move.

[jlittle]

... rsync... I don't think it will backup '/' while it is in use

IIUC (other than using dd) that's a windows problem that Linux doesn't have. There might be the odd inconsistency in the logs, and you wouldn't want to do a backup while something heavy, f.ex. an APT update, is running, but Linux doesn't mind.

"A smaller drive" sounds like an SSD. I can do a fresh install (from SSD to SSD, boot till "install complete") in seven minutes. Now if you're booting from a USB2 drive it's going to be somewhat slower, and then the first APT update will take a while, but my point is that it's quick and copying the install wouldn't save much time.