How to upgrade my HDD and keep my ubuntu 11.10 instalation

Question

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How to replace my disk without having to rebuild my Ubuntu install?

What is the best way to upgrade my 200 gb HDD to a new one of 500 gb but - and this is the tricky part - keep my ubuntu instalation. I curently have 2 partitions hda1 with the ubuntu 11.10 instalation and another partition hda5 with the home folder. On the new HDD I want to keep the same format 1 partition with ubuntu and another with the home folder.

Answer 1

Boot a live CD with both HDDs attached, start the Partition Editor (gparted), copy and paste the partitions from one drive to the other:

1. In the top right corner select your old hard disk.

2. Select a partition you want to copy (right-click → "Copy"):

   

3. In the top right corner select your new hard disk.

4. Paste the copied partition into unallocated space (right-click → "Paste"):

   

5. Resize if you want (right-click on the partition → "Resize/Move")

This will keep the unique identifiers of the partitions, so you shouldn't need to adjust anything after cloning the drive.

The final part is to re-install GRUB:

1. Note the root partition name of your new HDD (for example /dev/sdb1).

2. Open a gnome-terminal and run (sorry, I don't know a GUI way to do it, but it's just a couple of commands):

   1. sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
   2. sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sdb
   3. sudo umount /mnt

   Make sure you use the disk name at the end of point 2!

That's it, reboot with only your new HDD and you should be fine.

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Some advise: Do backups first! Only run one operation at a time and not all at once (so: copy → (resize) → copy → ...).

Answer 2

You can use a Live CD and DD one drive to the next then resize the partitions using gparted.

Answer 3

You could use a disk imaging and cloning software such as Clonezilla.