Arch Linux

DrLucky

Member

Registered: 2021-09-21

Posts: 23

Moving OS drive (and storage drives) to a new computer.

I'm building a new computer tomorrow morning after I pick up the last parts I need. Its time I retired this 14 year old Dell Precision Workstation.

I am going to move my OS drive and storage drives out of this desktop and into the new one.

My fstab is set up with the UUIDs of the drives.

When I installed Arch, I installed xf-86-amdgpu for the ancient AMD graphics card I have in it.
My new desktop will have an AMD 5700xt.

My workstation has 2 Xeon CPUs and the new desktop will have an AMD Ryzen 5 2600.

Do I need to install any other drivers or prepare my OS Arch drive in any way before plugging it into the new hardware? I believe I can simply move it over since my fstab is configured with UUIDs and my graphics driver is the same brand, but I wanted to make sure before doing so and ask if there's anythings else I should prepare before powering off my old PC for the last time.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,300

Re: Moving OS drive (and storage drives) to a new computer.

Should work fine from that aspect. Maybe setup amd-ucode instead of intel-ucode

DrLucky

Member

Registered: 2021-09-21

Posts: 23

Re: Moving OS drive (and storage drives) to a new computer.

The ucode! Thank you, I thought I had installed something Intel specific but couldn't remember.

oh, also I originally installed this to boot with bios and not UEFI due to the age of the previous motherboard. Should I reinstall grub once moved to the new machine for a UEFI boot?

Raynman

Member

Registered: 2011-10-22

Posts: 1,539

Re: Moving OS drive (and storage drives) to a new computer.

Then you would also need GPT (unless the new board supports UEFI/MBR booting) with an EFI system partition.

There's a relevant wiki page (with extra stuff about cloning that you don't need): https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Migrat … w_hardware

kermit63

Member

Registered: 2018-07-04

Posts: 372

Re: Moving OS drive (and storage drives) to a new computer.

Network device of the new rig? If you're connecting via ethernet then no problem, but wifi devices can be a problem. You may end up in a chicken-and-egg situation where you need to connect to the internet to get internet working.

---

Never argue with an idiot, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

DrLucky

Member

Registered: 2021-09-21

Posts: 23

Re: Moving OS drive (and storage drives) to a new computer.

I'm connected over Ethernet, so I'm all good on networking.

Thank you for the heads up and the link, I'll definitely look into that.
If the board does support MBR booting, is there a disadvantage to keeping it instead of migrating over?