How do I move my Manjaro Linux operating system to another drive?

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Hi, I’ve been trying to move my Manjaro to a different drive for a dozen (or more) hours now, but I can’t seem to get it working.

First I tried simply using clonezilla to clone my drive to another one and after a lot of problems I managed to clone it. Unfortunately it didn’t boot and I couldn’t manage to get it working.

I decided to try it the easy way, making a backup in Timeshift and then use that backup on a fresh install. It worked… But I noticed it left out some important things such as settings and app data (and I would have to set that all up all over again, meaning I could forget something important).

Is there a way in which I could move my entire OS, including things such as the ones timeshift left out to another drive?

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Timeshift by default doesn’t copy $HOME. So copy that manually (preferably with rsync and preserve various attributes like permissions/ACLs/etc). :man_shrugging:

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3

you can use clonezilla to create a exact clone to the new drive (note: the new drive must be minimum the same size or larger). afterwards you can use partition tools to enlarge the new drives size if it’s larger than the original.

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It doesn’t boot then :frowning_face:

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It will boot, you just have to chroot and restore GRUB:

6

Hi,

You can do this by using dd and fdisk, I don’t have all the details in mind but this video should help

7

I would reinstall Manjaro on the new disc and then rsync the files from old home to new home.

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You could also use gparted to copy the partition to another drive, and then delete the original. There is a move function, but copy and delete is safer. You might have to restore grub as a post above links to.

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One missing step: take out the old drive holding the original partition (I suggest not to delete the old partition yet, until the cloned one boots). The same UUID on the original and cloned partition can make any part of the booting process confused. Been there, done that. Experience doesn’t lie.

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I’m fairly new with this, but if Clonezilla has made an exact replica of the drive, why would it not boot?

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The problem could be that its an exact replica. Partitions are identified by a UUID number. As leledumbo pointed out, if two partitions (the original and the cloned copy) have the same UUID number it can make the computer not boot because it isnt sure which partition to boot to.

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This topic has been covered before - slightliy different phrased but nonetheles a search would have returned with several topics.

A direct clone wiil create UUID conflicts if you keep the original device as-is.

This can be worked around using sgdisk -G targeting the original device before reboot.

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13

Because the UEFI Boot-entry may hold information about

  • the position of the old drive in the Pc, and of
  • the known UUID :wink:
  • the position of the partition in the drive.

Example:

Boot0004* UEFI OS                  HD(1,GPT,b1d3d562-88ff-4ac2-8326-9c5d82892379,0x800,0x1dc800) \EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI
  • HD(1 :bomb:
  • b1d3d562-88ff-4ac2-8326-9c5d82892379 :heavy_check_mark:
  • ,0x800,0x1dc800) :heavy_check_mark:

You can also use maxi -eg ( --efi --grub )

to collect information about the boot process. This works,

  • when you are in your running system (with CTRL+ALT+F2).
  • And also in a live environment

:footprints:

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Instead of wasting spending time researching this, doing it and quite possibly deciding to reinstall anyway, I’d say screw it, and reinstall from the beginning.

But I know that’s probably just me…

:man_shrugging:

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  1. Reinstall on new disc
  2. Copy /home to new disc (it may be nessecary to use a live system)
  3. Configure systemd
  4. Configure mirrorlist on new system
  5. Install printer driver
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