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I have a 250 gb HDD running Ubuntu 16.04 and I want to migrate its contents over to a new 250 gb SSD. I found this page, which gives pretty detailed instructions for doing do. First I wanted to ask if this is a good and up-to-date set of instructions, since I don't really know who wrote it and it was posted 5 years ago.

Assuming it is, I'm curious about a couple of things. For one, this is a pretty complicated set of steps. Why can't I just image the existing HDD (say, with DD) and restore it to a blank SSD?

Also the instructions say that after moving things over I have to reinstall Grub. Why do I need to do this if grub is already installed on the HDD?

Steve
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  • Migrating to and from identical capacity storage devices is relatively easy. I, too, would be cautious about following a five year old procedure. DD will probably work for you although it is a "legacy" tool that does have some limitations. Clonezilla is arguably the best tool out there for cloning, including to targets that have different capacities than the source. Using clonezilla there should be no need to reinstall grub. – jones0610 Jun 17 '17 at 23:18
  • Are you planning on rebooting with both drives plugged in. Then with one drive or the other you have to change all UUIDs, edit fstab with new UUIDs, and reinstall grub2 totally so it fully updates with new UUIDs. If just obsoleting HDD then not an issue. I do prefer clean installs and copy /home and perhaps some of /etc. If a lot of apps installed,you can export a list and reinstall. Just like you would do to restore from your backups which you already must have. – oldfred Jun 17 '17 at 23:22
  • So to be clear, I can image the HDD, unplug it, plug in the SSD, restore, and be good to go? I have tried to use clonezilla, and its interface is just baffles me. Will DD work? – Steve Jun 17 '17 at 23:35
  • I'd recommend clonezilla... IF the target SSD is at least 1 block larger than the HDD... then you can do a direct clone. Clonezilla will NOT clone to a smaller drive, although you can copy partitions, or image it. dd has been affectionately been named "disk destroyer" as it can easily wipe source hard drives if used incorrectly. I'd be careful with dd. – heynnema Jun 17 '17 at 23:44
  • addendum: one other thing to consider... is this an old BIOS computer, or a newer UEFI computer? It'll make a difference how the HDD/SSD gets a partition table... msdos for BIOS, and GPT for UEFI... and if you clone/image, do you end up with the correct type for your computer, or should you take this time to correct this, if need be. – heynnema Jun 17 '17 at 23:49
  • Do be aware of the alignment requirements on the SSD if you use dd. The hard disk may not match. You'd be better off making new partitions, with modern tools which should align partitions properly. – ubfan1 Jun 18 '17 at 00:13
  • Alright I will try to struggle through the clonezilla interface. Maybe I can find a step-by-step that explains how to use it. The computer is a Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H which I believe is UEFI. It's new to me but came out in 2014 I think. – Steve Jun 18 '17 at 00:26
  • See http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live-doc.php for clone docs. – heynnema Jun 18 '17 at 01:03
  • As mentioned above, Clonezilla can make a backup image first then do the migration. It is your first best option. – Mark Jun 18 '17 at 01:12
  • The Clonezilla option worked great, once I looked at the docs. For anyone else looking to do this (1) image the old drive to external, (2) shut off, (3) swap HDD for SSD, (4) reboot with clonezilla and restore the image to the SSD. Very easy after all. Thanks for all the advice! – Steve Jun 18 '17 at 23:16

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