Author Topic: Ghost Ubuntu installation to different sized drive?  (Read 3065 times)

Ghost Ubuntu installation to different sized drive?
on: March 23, 2012, 10:00:40 AM
I've FINALLY got my XBMCLive installation nearly how I want it, with relevant scripts running on boot and the right permissions on everything. Problem is thats its still too slow to boot so I want to move it all over onto SSD.

My question is can I take some form of image of the drive and move it over to an SSD exactly as-is, without losing any of the OS settings? The SSD would be a different capacity from the current drive.

Formerly sexytw

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Re: Ghost Ubuntu installation to different sized drive?
Reply #1 on: March 23, 2012, 10:11:06 AM
The short answer would be, yes :)

I am fixing to get a bigger hdd to my lappy, boot from CD and make an image, use image on new hdd. :)

Re: Ghost Ubuntu installation to different sized drive?
Reply #2 on: March 23, 2012, 10:32:15 AM
Excellent, a quick google confirms. It looks like I may need to gpart the partition to a smaller size before using closezilla to take a partition image which I can restore to an SSD.

Now I just need to find a well priced SSD!
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Re: Ghost Ubuntu installation to different sized drive?
Reply #3 on: July 23, 2012, 16:14:48 PM
Finally ordered an SSD today (£45 60gb OCZ from Currys).

Will hopefully be transferring everything over later this week and FINALLY make the switch from microserver to dedicated box ...
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Re: Ghost Ubuntu installation to different sized drive?
Reply #4 on: July 23, 2012, 21:45:52 PM
Make sure that when you copy over the partition that you offset the partition by 1MiB in gparted, as you need to align it to get the best performance on an SSD

Re: Ghost Ubuntu installation to different sized drive?
Reply #5 on: July 25, 2012, 21:13:51 PM
Make sure that when you copy over the partition that you offset the partition by 1MiB in gparted, as you need to align it to get the best performance on an SSD

Thanks for this, had absolutely no idea about any of that.

Stage one is complete, have gparted the old drive down to 20gb so I can shift it over once the new drive arrives.
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Ghost Ubuntu installation to different sized drive?
Reply #6 on: July 28, 2012, 09:37:24 AM
Finally ordered an SSD today (£45 60gb OCZ from Currys).

Will hopefully be transferring everything over later this week and FINALLY make the switch from microserver to dedicated box ...

Mate you can get a 120gb crucial m4 for £65ish. Think on aria they had ocz ones for a similar price.

Re: Ghost Ubuntu installation to different sized drive?
Reply #7 on: July 29, 2012, 20:46:09 PM

Mate you can get a 120gb crucial m4 for £65ish. Think on aria they had ocz ones for a similar price.

Only need 15gb or so for the install so just got the cheapest one I could find, ended up being a 64gb OCZ from PC World.

I'm having a nightmare moving the partition across. Turns out the mechanical had unreadable sectors so clonezilla just craps out. I've tried all sorts of linux disk repair utils to no avail. Now I'm trying to copy the partition in gparted to the new drive and pressing ignore on the bad bits. No idea if that will copy the full mbr and allow it to boot, or if the resulting image will be flakey because of the missed blocks. Who knows! What I do know is that I dont want to have to set it all up again, there just isnt time now I've got the little one.
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Re: Ghost Ubuntu installation to different sized drive?
Reply #8 on: July 29, 2012, 22:36:19 PM
You might need rewrite your GRUB if not all om MBR is cloned.

Re: Ghost Ubuntu installation to different sized drive?
Reply #9 on: July 30, 2012, 08:24:14 AM
You might need rewrite your GRUB if not all om MBR is cloned.

I couldnt get it working sadly, ended up installing a fresh xbmcbuntu on the SSD and planning to try and copy as many of the settings over manually as possible.

I am getting a damn GRUB boot menu everytime I start up, I've tried editing the GRUB boot menu to I can only hide it, it still waits and delays the ultra speedy startup I want.
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Re: Ghost Ubuntu installation to different sized drive?
Reply #10 on: July 30, 2012, 11:15:37 AM
It is usually best to do a full new install if any of a previous one is corrupted. It often ends up you have to do it anyway and is simpler and saves time on average.

Re: Ghost Ubuntu installation to different sized drive?
Reply #11 on: July 30, 2012, 18:21:46 PM
I like MHDD to move sectors and repair the data, if that can't do it then Spinrite.

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