Howdy All! I recently got a bitchin’ new SSD, a Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB and I am struggle bussing trying to make it my new boot drive on my computer while keeping all of my programs and settings and things just the way I like them. Specs are I7 13700K cpu and an RTX 4070 gpu plugged into an MSI MAG Z790 Tomahawk Wifi mobo all working harmoniously to run Opensuse Tumbleweed.

Things I have done so far:

  1. Googled that shit, didn’t find much that helped me unfortunately. Found some forum where a guy was trying to move over to an SSD from a HDD and then remove the HDD, whereas I just want to change the boot drive to SSD and continue using both drives in the same rig. Someone else in that thread recommended clonezilla but then further down I read something about UUIDs(?) being copied as well and being unable to use both drives in the same computer or it can cause issues and corrupt data. That scared me off that.

  2. Tried using the Yast Partitioner tool but the scary warning box it makes you click through and the general lack of any clue what I’m doing scared me off that.

  3. Decided to just fresh install Opensuse Tumbleweed onto SSD with usb and then mount the HDD so that I can just copy everything over that way. Or so I thought. First I ran into the issue of the /home located in HDD not being viewable by my user on the SSD, I guess. Fixed that by unmounting the drive and remounting it with the following appended to the end of the mount command ‘-o subvol=/’ , I got that from google as well. Now I’m able to view things in /home on HDD from the user on SSD and I’ve even copied some things over. However I’m unable to access the .snapshots folder in the root directory of HDD which I intended to copy over the latest snapshot and use it on the SSD install to bring all of my non /home stuff over.

So I’m kinda stuck in the middle of transferring over now. I have an inclination toward being lazy so I don’t really want to spend time installing all of the flatpaks and configuring the OS again if I don’t have to. Mostly because I’ve already had one false start with Linux and went ahead and started fresh so this would be the third time having to set everything up again from scratch. Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated!

  • harsh3466@lemmy.ml
    6·
    2 days ago

    If you want to clone the existing system onto the new ssd, here’s the broad strokes of what you can do.

    1. Get a usb stick and write your linux distro of choice to it. Doesn’t really matter which one, we’re just using this to clone the system drive to the new drive. You want the system drive to be totally inactive during the clone which is why you’ll do it from a live usb rather than with the system itself booted.
    2. shut down the system
    3. Install the new ssd. DO NOT REMOVE THE CURRENT SYSTEM/BOOT SSD. You should now have two ssds installed.
    4. If you can’t install the second ssd, plug it in to usb via an enclosure
    5. Boot from the live usb
    6. open the terminal
    7. run lsblk and note the /dev/sdX path of the system drive. Write it down.
    8. From the same output, note the /dev/sdX path of the new ssd. Write it down.
    9. Use the dd command to clone the system drive to the new ssd. The command will look like this:

    `dd if=/dev/existingBootDrive of=/dev/newSSDDrive bs=8M status=progress oflag=direct’

    This command will clone the exact data of the system drive to the new ssd. the if portion of the command stands for in file, as in the source of the data you want to clone. Make sure that is your existing boot drive. of is the out file, the destination of the clone. Make sure that is your new ssd.

    When you do this, the new drive will appear to be the same size as the old drive. This is due to the cloning, but is easily resolved by resizing the partition(s). How you do this depends on the filesystem, so refer to this guide for resizing

    1. Once you’ve resized the partition/disk, double check the partition UUIDs on the new ssd against what’s in /etc/fstab on the new disk. To do this, run blkid to get a list of all the partitions and their UUIDs. Note the UUIDs of the partitions on the new ssd.
    2. To check /etc/fstab, you’ll have to mount the root (/) partition of the new drive somewhere in the live system. In the terminal you should already be in the home folder of the live system user. Make a new directory with mkdir. Call it whatever you want. So something like: mkdir newboot
    3. run lsblk and make note of the root partition on the new ssd, then mount that to newboot (or whatever you called it) with sudo mount /dev/sdX newboot (where X is the actual device label for the root parition of the new drive`
    4. open /etc/fstab with your terminal text editor of choice. Compare the UUIDs to the ones you noted. If they are the same, you’re golden (they should be the same, but I’ve also had them change on me. ymmv). If they are different, delete the old UUID and replace it with the new UUID for each respective partiiton
    5. Shut down the system
    6. Remove the old boot drive, and install the new boot drive in it’s place
    7. Boot the system. If all goes well, you’ll boot right into tumbleweed as if nothing has changed except you’re running from your shiny new ssd
    8. If it doesn’t boot, boot again from the live usb, and again check the UUIDs to make sure there were no mistakes
    9. Keep the old SSD unmodified in case you need to revert back to it.
    • Marafon@sh.itjust.worksOP
      1·
      23 hours ago

      I have hit a bit of a snag. Quick rundown of what I have done. I attempted to use clonezilla but then I learned that it can’t clone a larger partition to a smaller partition, even if it is mostly “empty” space. So I learned how to use gparted from a live USB version of Linux mint to size the partition on my hdd with all of my stuff on it to be the same size as my new SSD (8tb to 4tb) so that it could clone to it. Well clonezilla ran for a couple hours overnight and then when I went to check things in the morning I got an error attempting to mount the drive as described in step 12. I don’t remember the error specifically,something about a super block, but my googling told me it was most likely an issue with the cloning process. So I decided to just follow your directions exactly and use disc destroyer for the first time. It took five-ever as in almost 5 hours to copy everything over lol but I am able to mount it as described in step 12, great joy! But then at step 13 when I type sudo nano /newboot/etc/fstab I am told that it doesn’t exist. I mosey on over in the file browser and sure enough there is no file at that location. For shits and gigs I run sudo nano /etc/fstab to look at the one on the live USB version of Linux mint and it doesn’t seem to be what I should be looking for either:

      overlay / overlay rw 0 0 tmpfs /tmp tmpfs nosuid,nodev 0 0

      I thought about saying YOLO but then I remembered this was the exact UUID stuff I was worried about when I read the thread from Google so I thought I’d ask before just trying to boot the SSD and seeing what happens.

      Also I have some clarifying questions about the last few instructions. Step 15 says to remove the source HDD before booting, which I can do to test that the SSD cloned successfully but after the test I do want to be able to put the HDD back in to the computer and reformat it as extra storage space. Does that change anything about what I should do? If I want to use both drives together do the UUIDs still need to be identical? Or should they be different in that case?

      Thanks again so much for your help, I feel like I’m making progress and Im accidentally learning quite a bit in the process.

      • Infernal_pizza@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        22 hours ago

        From your post it sounds like you’re using btrfs subvolumes, did you use the same ‘-o subvol=/’ when mounting newboot in step 12? I’m pretty sure you should be able to see /etc/fstab if you do that

        • Marafon@sh.itjust.worksOP
          1·
          14 hours ago

          I tried that and for some reason it only had one directory in /etc and that was snapper. I unmounted and remounted without the -o subvol=/ and I checked in /etc for fstab again and this time I found it so I’m sure I just overlooked it the first time.

          I was able to verify that the UUIDs were all the same but then when I attempted to boot from the SSD it went straight to what I think is the grub recovery screen? I just typed shutdown and booted back into the HDD. I guess I’m going to try and clone the drive again. If it doesn’t work again I’ll probably just bite the bullet and perform a fresh install on the SSD again and set everything up manually.

          • Infernal_pizza@lemm.eeEnglish
            2·
            10 hours ago

            Do you have a screenshot of the error or recovery screen?

            Also what do you get if you run sudo btrfs subvolume list /newboot ?

            • Marafon@sh.itjust.worksOP
              1·
              3 hours ago

              Screenshot of screen ssd boots to currently

              spoiler

              results of sudo btrfs subvolume list newboot:

              spoiler

              mint@mint:~$ sudo btrfs subvolume list newboot

              ID 256 gen 16336 top level 5 path @

              ID 257 gen 16344 top level 256 path @/var

              ID 258 gen 16342 top level 256 path @/usr/local

              ID 259 gen 16336 top level 256 path @/srv

              ID 260 gen 16341 top level 256 path @/root

              ID 261 gen 16336 top level 256 path @/opt

              ID 262 gen 16344 top level 256 path @/home

              ID 263 gen 16163 top level 256 path @/boot/grub2/x86_64-efi

              ID 264 gen 16163 top level 256 path @/boot/grub2/i386-pc

              ID 265 gen 16327 top level 256 path @/.snapshots

              ID 266 gen 16345 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/1/snapshot

              ID 267 gen 65 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/2/snapshot

              ID 300 gen 13737 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/33/snapshot

              ID 301 gen 13737 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/34/snapshot

              ID 303 gen 13737 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/36/snapshot

              ID 323 gen 13737 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/56/snapshot

              ID 324 gen 13737 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/57/snapshot

              ID 337 gen 15853 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/70/snapshot

              ID 338 gen 15855 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/71/snapshot

              ID 339 gen 15884 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/72/snapshot

              ID 340 gen 15886 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/73/snapshot

              ID 341 gen 15889 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/74/snapshot

              ID 342 gen 15891 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/75/snapshot

              ID 343 gen 15929 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/76/snapshot

              ID 344 gen 15931 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/77/snapshot

              ID 345 gen 16281 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/78/snapshot

              ID 346 gen 16287 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/79/snapshot

              ID 347 gen 16291 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/80/snapshot

              ID 348 gen 16326 top level 265 path @/.snapshots/81/snapshot

              I appreciate your help! I probably won’t have time to work on it again really until tomorrow, but I feel like I’m close.

      • harsh3466@lemmy.ml
        3·
        2 days ago

        You could. I didn’t even think about it. I’m used to using dd, but clonezilla is a totally viable option here.

    • Marafon@sh.itjust.worksOP
      1·
      2 days ago

      Thank you so much! I’ve only got the one SSD and one HDD, sorry that I wasn’t very clear in my original post. But I think I can follow your detailed instructions and resolve this. I’ll report back when I’ve had time to do as you’ve described. Again, much appreciated!

      • harsh3466@lemmy.ml
        2·
        2 days ago

        No worries! Happy to help, and the instructions will work with the HDD, just use the HDD/boot as the in. I shouldn’t have assumed the existing boot was an ssd. Good luck!!!