Getting new hardware - can I just move the disk?

[Bo Berglund]

On Mon, 11 Oct 2021 12:29:53 +0200, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:

>On Sun, 10 Oct 2021 at 18:07, Bo Berglund <bo.berglund at gmail.com> wrote:

>It is hard for me to say since I do not know what the new machine is
>-- I don't think you have told us -- and even if I did, the methods
>are different for different makes/models and I don't know every PC
>ever made!

It is:
Lenovo IdeaCentre 3 07ADA05 Model 90MV
Comes with:
- 512 GB SSD NVM Express (NVMe) PCI Express
- 16 GB RAM
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3500U 4 cores 2.1 GHz
- Graphics: AMD Radeon RX Vega 8 (not useful for a server)


>So I refer back to my earlier message: try it with FreeDOS. Check and verify:
>[1]  if it is able to boot from a legacy BIOS type USB disk
>[2] if it will boot from a BIOS-type MBR hard disk

Since there is no free disk space on the drive I would have to delete/shrink a
partition to do this, right?

But what about this instead:
>From the live USB with Ubuntu Mint 20.04 (where I use GParted now) I could
cohoose to install Ubuntu onto this machine and then Ubuntu 20 would deal with
the disk handling. I assume Ubuntu is clever enough to handle a machine from
Lenovo, right?

If I then am asked if I want to dual-boot or completely remove Windows I would
select remove and then presumably the Ubuntu installer would handle the disk
drive stuff for me...

This would get the Microsoft / Windows problem solved.

>Do this _before_ you try to copy Ubuntu onto it.

With this I guess you mean I could not copy my old installation onto it, right?


>I do not like UEFI and try to avoid it. My computers at home these
>days are mostly old Thinkpads. With them, if the hard disk is MBR,
>they start in BIOS mode and you can use BIOS-type commands.

I think that Thinkpads are made by Lenovo since a good many years when IBM let
go of them....


>If the disk is partitioned in GPT, then they boot in UEFI mode and
>everything is different.
>
>I have not used NVMe drives myself but I have done some Googling and
>the answers are contradictory. There are at least 2 possibilities:
>
>* You cannot boot from an NVMe disk in BIOS mode
>* You might be able to but only if the manufacturer put some kind of
>driver in the NVMe drive's firmware

But if Ubuntu 20 fixed it when installing itself as described above, then maybe?

>> Then how does one "copy" a partition in GParted?
>> Is this howto accurate?
>> https://www.diskpart.com/clone/clone-partition-gparted-7201.html
>
>Yes.

OK, good!
I have since read up more and it seems like a pretty straightforward operation.

>
>You might need to do something like:
>
>[1] (re-)install Windows to create the UEFI boot structures
>[2] install Ubuntu alongside in a UEFI config, in a GPT partition, to
>create a new Ubuntu boot loader shim in the ESP
>[3] *then* copy your old system's partition onto the new disk instead
>of the existing Ubuntu partition
>[4] reinstall your bootloader so your old copy can boot

Maybe I can start 

>
>Yes it is a mess. Yes it is complicated.
>
>UEFI is very complicated and for complex legal reasons it is hard for
>FOSS companies to support.
>
>I am old, cynical, embittered and a little paranoid. I think Microsoft
>did this stuff intentionally to make it harder to run FOSS OSes on new
>PCs, as a strike against their Linux competition.

Yes, I have seen you around here quite a bit and recently I saw that you are a
little bit older than myself, but not by much...
I've been doing electronics and software development for 40+ years but I have
only encountered Linux privately and mostly recently since I retired from my day
work 10+ years ago...

>
>I have been widely mocked and derided for this, but nobody can falsify
>it. Microsoft is a really very nasty company with 4 decades of playing
>dirty and breaking the law to grow and protect its monopoly.
>
I also do not like what they are doing....

>> When that is done the next step is to do the release-upgrade to get to 20.04,
>> right?
>
>Given all the complexities involved here, I think, in context, I would
>make 2-3 backups and upgrade the old server _first_, so at least
>you're working with a modern OS.

I think that the 20.04 upgrade needs to be done first...

But then I also need to restructure my server a bit, primarily to move /home to
a partition of its own. It holds the bulk of disk space now (175+ GB) and most
of that are videos and such. Without that the system part is maybe 30 GB or so,
much simpler to handle.

Thanks for your comments, always appreciating talking to another old hand!


-- 
Bo Berglund
Developer in Sweden