Transferring my install to new computer

[p.echols at comcast.net]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Liam Proven" <lproven at gmail.com>
> To: "Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Sent: Saturday, June 23, 2012 11:12:28 AM
> Subject: Re: Transferring my install to new computer
> 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`.
> 
> 

Thanks Liam, that's kind of what I thought, but was not sure.  Imaging the drive is a great idea, but the HD has to be connected to something.  What I may do is install the harddrive, but boot the acer from a clonezilla CD and image to a usb drive.  It won't be fast, but I have all the pieces I'll need.