Getting new hardware - can I just move the disk?

[Liam Proven]

On Tue, 12 Oct 2021 at 23:18, Bo Berglund <bo.berglund at gmail.com> wrote:

> So I have freed up space on the target drive to hold the *data* in the source
> partition, which spans 464GiB, almost the whole disk, but uses only 165.9 GiB of
> data.

Good!

> Do I need to shrink the source partition before copying

Yes.

> or is GParted clever
> enough to handle the size difference when pasting into the target's free space?

No.

GParted is basically a FOSS clone of the old, proprietary but
wonderful PartitionMagic (without some of the more advanced later
features). This is an intentional omission, I think, because in
unskilled hands, attempting to make "smart" "helpful" decisions could
be very dangerous and lead to a system that could not run.

I think they deliberately kept it a little bit harder to stop people
getting themselves into trouble.

> I have never copied partitions before

(!)

I'm surprised. It's so useful. I've been doing it routinely for 25
years or more.

> 1) Shrink the source partition to below 241.15 GiB (the free space on the target
> drive), then copy-paste.

This.

> 2) Copy-paste without shrink but let GParted figure out what size is needed on
> the new partition to hold the data.

Nope.

> But the paste option seems not to be enabled here, this indicates that I need to
> shrink the source partition too,

Correct.

> which is really to be avoided since I do not
> want to modify the source disk until I have a good backup...

True.

> But maybe it is the only way?

It is. Or buy a bigger backup disk. ;-)

> And what number do I enter, the size is shown in GiB but the size entry box when
> shrinking is in a smaller unit and the number I entered while shrinking the
> destination is not what later showed up...

I use the calculator, work out the size I want in MiB, multiply by
1024 in Calculator, copy the result and paste into the box.

(I 30+ years ago memorised a set of round numbers in binary, though:
1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32767, 65535 and so on.)


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