Hello guys,

I bought a new SSD (WD black sn770 2 TB) for my laptop and I also got a USB-C hub which includes a slot for an SSD. My old SSD is 512 GB

So here is what I want to do: I want to change to Linux from Windows 11. I want to keep my old SSD in the USB-C hub with Windows still installed in case I need it for some software/games but Linux will now be my main OS.

Are there any tips or recommendations on things I should look out for when doing this?

I also don’t know if I can just install Linux in what is ATM the external SSD and then swap it out afterwards with the SSD inside the laptop without having to do anything extra and if it will just work like that.

I plan on following this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfWdnCIrcxk.

Also any recommendations on how I can safely transfer some files? Do I need a special software?

In case interested this is the distro that I plan on using: https://garudalinux.org

As a side note, I did check that the SSD is compatible with my computer and has everything right.

  • @[email protected]English
    7•6 months ago

    As a side note: the grub and root filesystem issues are mostly an issue of the past. If you’re on a modern distro (and haven’t mucked with things) they no longer use device names, but rather rely on UUIDs, which is good: those don’t change even if you move the drives around.

    As long as grub is in the boot sector and you’re using UUIDs in your grub.conf and fstab, you should almost never have any issues moving drives around the same system.

    • @[email protected]
      4•6 months ago

      Yeah I debated mentioning it because fully agree - UUID should cover it. But idk what bootloader Garuda uses or how it configures it, and I have no experience going from an external USB-C enclosure to internal drive, is it really seamless?

      I just trying to advise on the side of cautiousness.

      • @[email protected]English
        5•6 months ago

        I’ve recently moved drives between m2 slots and usb-c enclosures and everything worked, but that’s also why I used the word ‘should’ a lot.

        I’ve had zero issues in the past few years moving drives around (even between different systems!) and my experience has been nothing but ‘shit just works’, but yeah, I know that there’s probably edge cases where that’s not true.

        For what they’re doing, though, it should be fine, since there’s a relatively low amount of complexity and grub really doesn’t care where the drive is as long as it has the UUID at this point.