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I am upgrading hardware but need to preserve the family's data plus look and feel. This is not about upgrading the operating system. I think the OS will be the same (14.04 LTS). Previously I have set up users with same group and user IDs and then restored from backup, and then still had a fair amount of pain with all the application data.

Is there a better way?

Peter Lavers
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You can also move the actual harddisk to the new system. Only thing you need to worry about is 3rd party drivers (like for the graphics card; if you have a nVidia in 1 and an AMD in the other it will result in problems). Remove those before the move and re-install them on the new system.

The same method is possible by using cat (in the old days that would be dd) and cloning the data. You can clone a disk from sdb to sdc with (again 1st delete the 3rd party drivers to avoid problems) ...

sudo sh -c 'cat /dev/sdb >/dev/sdc'

So put the hard disk from the new system into the old one and copy away. A 128Gb ssd will take about 1/2 hour this way.

Rinzwind
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You can use aptik to migrate your applications and settings. It appears able to migrate themes as well but I have not tried that.

Organic Marble
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    I ended up installing the old hard drives as per above suggestions. But thanks for the pointer. aptik looks very useful. – Peter Lavers Feb 27 '16 at 04:12
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You should be fine. Just trasnfer the disk to the new computer.

If you need to reinstall for any reason, the data in home is preserved as long as you do not format the partition with /home on it.

See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuReinstallation

Since Hardy it is possible to reinstall Ubuntu without losing the content of the /home folder (the folder that contains program settings, internet bookmarks, emails and all your documents, music, videos and other user files). This can be done even if /home is not on a separate partition (which is the case by default if you did not manually separate it when installing Ubuntu originally). This tutorial can also be used to upgrade Ubuntu (eg 11.04 -> 12.04 from a 12.04 live-CD).

Of course if you value your data it should be backed up regardless

See - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BackupYourSystem

All your user data is in /home so you can copy or rsync /home to a DVD, flash drive, etc from a live CD. Be sure to use a Linux filesystem to preserve permissions (DO NOT BACK UP TO VFAT OR NTFS).

Panther
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  • Just for curiosity, why is it not OK to back up to fat32 or ntfs? I've been working on user documents in Windows and Ubuntu interchangeably, and never noticed any problems. I move the files between systems through a USB stick (fat32 of course) or copy them to an ntfs data partition, accessible by both systems. – theodorn Feb 14 '16 at 14:06
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    Because neither vfat or ntjs preserve ownership or permissions. So all your files will have permissions of 777 or however you mount the fat/ntfs. It may work "ok" for a single user system, but, IMHO, for backups use an archive such as tar and save the archive. There is a brief discussion of the issue on the wiki page and tons if you search - http://askubuntu.com/questions/112863/rsync-not-working-between-ntfs-fat-and-ext – Panther Feb 14 '16 at 14:18
  • I see, thank you. I saw that you mentioned it was because of permissions, and the OP stated this was a family computer. Thereby assumably more than one user, so this is probably an important issue for him. – theodorn Feb 14 '16 at 14:23