Arch Linux

nedlinin

Member

Registered: 2011-03-22

Posts: 16

Upgrading OS harddrive and motherboard

I am planning on swapping out the hard drive I am currently using as the OS drive as it is beginning to have some issues.  What is the easiest way to move from one hard drive to another if all of /home, /boot, etc is on the drive?

Also, I was wanting to upgrade the machine.. It is currently an Athlon64 and I wanted to swap it out for a Core2.  Is it as simple as swapping the hardware or will more work need to be done?

Appreciate the advice!

masteryod

Member

Registered: 2010-05-19

Posts: 433

Re: Upgrading OS harddrive and motherboard

I'm not sure what is the problem here... New cpu + new motherboard + new OS HDD = fresh OS installation on new drive + copy some files from old drive if you need them. You could try clonezilla or other cloning tool and partition resizing tool afterwards but I'm not suggesting this unless you are absolutely sure you need exact same copy of old system, it could be messy and not worth the effort in this case.

chpln

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2009-09-17

Posts: 361

Re: Upgrading OS harddrive and motherboard

The most hassle-free (not necessarily the quickest) way to migrate drives would likely be to backup, reinstall the base of Arch, and restore.  An off-the-top-of-my-head, completely untested procedure:

1. Backup your package list

pacman -Qqe > packages.list

2. Create a text file (let's call it 'exclude.list') of files to be excluded from the backup.  I recommend at least:

/etc/shadow
/etc/passwd
/etc/gshadow
/etc/group

3. Create an archive of any user data (anywhere you've changed by hand)

tar -zpcvf mydata.tar.gz -X exclude.list /home /etc /usr/local /whereeverelse

4. Migrate the package list and archive to somewhere you can access after reinstallation.
5. Reinstall arch.  Don't worry about selecting any extra packages -- you'll install these next.
6. Restore the package list

pacman -S $(cat package.list)

7. Backup the current state of /etc (just in case)
8. Create any additional users.
9. Restore the archive:

tar -C / -pzxvf mydata.tar.gz

10. Tweak permissions of home directories if needed (UID's won't necessarily match up if you have multiple users and created them in a different order this time around)
11. Ensure /etc/fstab, /boot/grub/menu.lst (or /boot/grub/grub.cfg or whatever) is correct for your new disk configuration
12. Regenerate locales, initrd, etc. -- anything in your configuration that needs to be regenerated and you've changed the configuration files from defaults.
13. Cross your fingers and reboot.

As for the other hardware changes I would not expect any problems.

Last edited by chpln (2011-11-12 00:14:27)

nedlinin

Member

Registered: 2011-03-22

Posts: 16

Re: Upgrading OS harddrive and motherboard

@chpln :

Thats the exact kind of answer I needed!  Appreciate it.  I'll give it a shot sometime this weekend