How to migrate to a larger hard drive ?

[Externet]

Gave up with Ubuntu Linux 9.10. Too many hurdles with unachievable settings and drivers. Going back to 7.10

My perfectly working small hard drive (4GB ) is being replaced by a larger (60GB) I already loaded 7.10 in it and is working right now; but I want to transfer all the drivers, settings, programs, selections, personalized choices tweaked along the years to my needs and taste.

There is no drag-and-drop that I know of, no simple visualization of where the (hiding) files containing the tweaks are, and less for my poor skills. I do not even remember how many things I have tweaked along the years

How to either:
-Make a exact clone onto the larger drive (both use single full partition)
-Transfer the tweaks. I do not care about data, pictures, documents... They are kept externally.

Anyone would imagine it is an everyday task to migrate to a larger drive, but deep digging for instructions on the net yields more confusion of guessy choices than light.

Thanks,
Miguel
-The gold medalist of compfuser idiots-

[SETEC_Astronomy]

Is the old 4GB drive still bootable? If the 4GB drive is still intact install it as the IDE Master drive with the larger drive as the slave. Boot into the 7.10 installation on the 4GB drive then open a terminal window. Making a clone is as simple as typing "sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb" (without quotes). It will take a little while but when the prompt returns to externet@externet:~$ it's done. Simply swap the Master and Slave drives around and task completed. Like always there are many ways to do this, above is just one. What you will be left with is a 4GB partition on your 60GB drive. To make use of the remaining disk space you can copy over your files and change your home dir mount point to the new partiton, likely to be /dev/sda2. I'm happy to walk you though other options if you'd like.

Edit: On second thought don't do that, it's risky if you have a typo. Unless you've edited settings files outside of your home directory or if you've compiled software from source all you should have to do is copy over your old home directory to your new installation. If you installed all of your software using apt-get or synaptic you're in luck. Copy your home dir to your new install, on your old install run the following command "dpkg --get-selections > InstalledSoftware", copy the newly created InstalledSoftware file to the new drive and then run "dpkg --get-selections < InstalledSoftware" and then run "sudo apt-get -u dselect-upgrade".

[Externet]

Thanks, Setec.

Trying to follow your thoughts...

Both hard drives are fully perfectly operational. Both have 7.10. Both have one entire single partition. The tweaks in the small one are to be transferred for identical behavior on the new larger drive. No files need transfer; they reside in an external data-only USB drive.

Programs are the least of my worries. Do not have much. I operate way, way leaner than you can imagine. VLC sound would be desirable to migrate. The tweaks are my concern. Examples :
- I have some sort of Flash plug-in or Flash player or something and at the same time a Flashblocker that took a Ubuntu developer-neighbor genius to put it to work properly doing his magic on the console.
- I operate in a couple of languages; and european character sets which took me some sweat to setup (and to delete oriental alphabets) and of course cannot remember how I did it then.

Your first option would leave me with 2 partitions -- Can they be merged later to a single ; or how would keeping 2 would affect behavior ? Do I have to restart from a blank new drive to do it ? The walk-trough hand-holding would be the way

Your second option seems fine, but no hurry if you can come up with others.

Miguel

[SETEC_Astronomy]

I still believe copying the old partition is a better solution than a settings migration. I think you'll end up with a more stable system that way. Install gparted, "sudo apt-get install gparted". To use gparted go to System -> Administration -> GParted. Within the program select the 4GB drive/partition, then right click and select copy. Now use the dropdown menu top right to select your new bigger drive and select paste.

Another possibility if you didn't have plans for the old 4GB drive is to simply install it as the PC's bootable Master drive and leave the new drive as slave. Use Gparted to format the new drive to Ext3 and make the mount point /home. Now you'll have plenty of space for file storage and possibly faster transfer times, plus all of your settings.

[Externet]

Thanks again.
gparted has to be installed in the donor or recipient or master or slave or does not matter which hard drive ?

I will not use the donor-old-4GB drive any more. Will be kept dormant and away as fully functional reserve backup. (My paranoia )
Miguel

[SETEC_Astronomy]

Sorry I feel like I've been giving you the run around, this isn't a task I normally perform and when I do I use my first mentioned method. I have to put myself in the other chair...

[SETEC_Astronomy]

The proper procedure would be to run GParted from an Ubuntu Live CD.
The 7.10 disc you likely have should work. The software is on the Live CD by default so all you must do is run it. Once the copy is completed make the new home partition on the new drive, careful not to overwrite or delete the old.

[SETEC_Astronomy]

ATTN: This makes no sense but the forum absolutely refused to let me write both of the above entries as one post (It also refused to let me add this). After a few minutes of struggling I tried splitting it to two posts and it worked, go figure.

[Externet]

Reading about gparted in several sites, seems to be the right choice as you recommend. Will pursue its use soon. So far, my 7.10 Livedisc did not show it up or I was unable to find nor figure it out to make it appear/run it.
I may have to look into downloading it from the net and burning it onto a live gparted disc. Will let know progress.

Thanks,
Miguel

[SETEC_Astronomy]

Any Ubuntu Live disc should work, the software version doesn't limit it's use to a certain Ubuntu release. The 7.10 Live CD iso should still be available from te Ubuntu.com website if you would feel better using that version.

[Externet]

Hi Setec
Downloaded Live-gparted, burned onto a CD. That part worked.

Did the partitions deletion on the recipient drive, then copied the partitions from the donor and did something wrong, very probably put one extended partition (Linux swap?) inside the stretched main? and got Grub loading error 17.
I have to decide to either start all over fighting with the nomenclature that confuses me or try http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=252168

Will see. to be updated...
Miguel
The gold medalist of compfuser idiots.

[Externet]

Done, Setec. Works, identical clone of the old hard drive with same everything behavior in a larger size hard drive.

Took some learning to learn. Am happy thanks to your expert guidance. The hurdle was the gparted program refused to copy the extended partition with the logical partition inside. I had to make the extended as 'new' in order to paste the logical into it !

Million thanks,
Miguel
Downgraded to silver medalist now.

[SETEC_Astronomy]

You're welcome, glad it all worked out for you.

[joneray]

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