The title pretty much speaks for itself… I have a linux install that I’ve spent a considerable time configuring, which is unfortunately installed on a drive that’s starting to show signs of dying.

My question is: how, if there is a way, can I migrate said linux install over to a different drive, while preserving all the configurations and such.

EDIT: Thank you to everyone who commented! I made the transfer, using dd and it went mostly smoothly, even if it did take a while.

  • @JTskulk
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    14 days ago

    If it were me, I’d do a fresh minimal install of the same OS, boot to the livecd and then delete pretty much everything except for /etc and /boot. I’d then cp -ar all my files from the failing drive and then manually merge /etc back. I say manually merge because most things would get replaced by my old files, but I’d manually modfify my fstab to keep the new partition information and add my extra mounts after it. Maybe that’s just me though. You can also just dd and then resize partitions if necessary.