Transferring my install to new computer

[Liam Proven]

On 23 June 2012 19:08,  <p.echols at comcast.net> wrote:
> Greetings all:
>
> I have 10.4 LTS on my ASUS eeepc netbook.  It now has a power problem and will not boot.  The hard drive is fine.
>
> At the moment I need to be out of town in a few days and cannot wait for the parts to repair and I MUST have a functioning laptop.  I have a acer aspire 5100 I could take on my trip.  Ideally I want all my existing install to be on that machine.  I have two options:
>
> (1) I can install 10.04 (or 12.04 which I was planning at some point) and restore my /home from backup.  The only loss would be a day worth of email that did not make the backup.
>
> (2) I could install the hard drive from the netbook into the laptop and boot it.
>
> I know that the first will work, and is the safer bet.  The real question is if #2 will work?  Please assume that the hard drives are compatible.  Obviously I will have to confirm this.  But will an existing installation boot on completely different hardware?  If so, would there be things I need to do to make it work properly?

Linux isn't Windows. Yes, the same hard disk should work fine in your
other computer. If you had proprietary graphics drivers on the old
machine (seems unlikely, on a netbook) then you might want to remove
them - & if necessary install new, appropriate ones. Otherwise, you
should be fine.

Of course, there would be no harm in doing an image-backup of the
netbook drive before you reinstall it, if you have the space. Look at
tools such as `fsarchiver`, `partimage` or `partclone`.


-- 
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