Getting new hardware - can I just move the disk?

Mon Oct 11 21:25:02 UTC 2021

** Reply to message from Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> on Mon, 11 Oct 2021
21:41:40 +0200

> On Mon, 11 Oct 2021 at 19:59, Bo Berglund <bo.berglund at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > It is:
> > Lenovo IdeaCentre 3 07ADA05 Model 90MV
> > Comes with:
> > - 512 GB SSD NVM Express (NVMe) PCI Express
> > - 16 GB RAM
> > - CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3500U 4 cores 2.1 GHz
> > - Graphics: AMD Radeon RX Vega 8 (not useful for a server)
> 
> Sounds like a decent, fairly powerful machine.
> 
> The one thing I will say is this: my partner's PC in her old flat is a
> Lenovo minitower. I don't know if it's an Ideacenter and it's 200km
> away.
> 
> I had major problems getting it to dual-boot Win10 and Linux Mint in
> UEFI mode. The GRUB menu would not appear, whatever I tried. You had
> to press F12 to pick a boot disk, then choose the HDD, and _then_ the
> menu came up.
> 
> Upgrading from Mint 19  (i.e. Ubuntu 18.04) to Mint 20 (i.e. Ubuntu
> 20.04) magically fixed this.
> 
> This is why I said you might want to upgrade _first_.
> 
> Second caveat:
> 
> I have only tried to move a Linux partition from an MBR machine to a
> GUID machine once: from a Thinkpad X300 to an Apple MacBook.
> 
> Not only did it fail, it destroyed and corrupted the hard disk and I
> had to reinstall Mac OS X.
> 
> > Since there is no free disk space on the drive I would have to delete/shrink a
> > partition to do this, right?
> 
> Wrong.
> 
> You will have to totally erase the hard disk and repartition it with
> MBR instead of GPT. These are not interchangeable.
> 
> So, if you do, ensure you have a working, tested, bootable Win10 key
> *FIRST* before changing anything. Also ensure you have made a copy of
> any activation keys using ProduKey or similar.
> 
> https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html
> 
> *But* you can test if it will boot off a legacy BIOS USB key without
> doing anything.
> 
> > But what about this instead:
> > From the live USB with Ubuntu Mint 20.04 (where I use GParted now) I could
> > cohoose to install Ubuntu onto this machine and then Ubuntu 20 would deal with
> > the disk handling. I assume Ubuntu is clever enough to handle a machine from
> > Lenovo, right?
> 
> It might. With UEFI all bets are off.
> 
> What you *must* do is boot the key *in UEFI mode*.
> 
> If you boot from a key in BIOS mode and then install onto a GPT/UEFI
> disk, in my experience, you will destroy it. Nothing will boot off it
> afterwards and I was unable to fix such a mess with either Linux or
> Windows tools.
> 
> So you need to learn how to choose the boot mode, how to know which
> boot mode you are in, and how to edit the UEFI boot settings and check
> and maybe change the priorities.
> 
> Yes, it is a mess.
> 
> > If I then am asked if I want to dual-boot or completely remove Windows I would
> > select remove and then presumably the Ubuntu installer would handle the disk
> > drive stuff for me...
> 
> Maybe. I have not tried this. I never use the automatic-partitioning
> options, and I dual-boot all my UEFI machines.
> 
> I recommend shrinking the Windows partition as small as possible but
> leaving it there.
> 
> I wrote a blog post on how to do this:
> https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/68495.html
> 
> Extremely short version:
> [1] Run cleanup twice (first for user files, then again for system files).
> [2] Disable hibernation.
> [3] Disable swap.
> [4] Run `CHKDSK /F`
> [5] Then reboot into Linux, delete the pagefile and swapfile, delete
> everything in C:\WINDOWS\TEMP and
> C:\USERS\$username\AppData\Local\Temp
> [6] Use Gparted to shrink the Windows partition so it has at a minimum
> 25% free space. Leave the ESP and the "Windows Reserved" partition and
> the C drive. Any others you should be safe to remove.
> 
> Then install Ubuntu into the remaining space.
> 
> > This would get the Microsoft / Windows problem solved.
> 
> Should do. If you remove all the Windows partitions, though, you must
> leave the ESP.
> 
> > >Do this _before_ you try to copy Ubuntu onto it.
> >
> > With this I guess you mean I could not copy my old installation onto it, right?
> 
> That is the key problem.
> 
> If you install Ubuntu in dual-boot, then remove the Ubuntu partition
> and replace it with a copy of your old one, then:
> 
> • you will have to reinstall GRUB _in UEFI mode_
> • you might have to check and edit /etc/fstab to make sure it knows
> it's a different partition now
> 
> ... but it might work. I have never tried this. I am not 100% sure.
> 
> If anyone else reading this has tried copying a partition from an
> MBR+BIOS PC onto a GPT+UEFI PC, do please speak up!

I did this using the instructions at
https://serverfault.com/questions/963178/how-do-i-convert-my-linux-disk-from-mbr-to-gpt-with-uefi

> 
> > I think that Thinkpads are made by Lenovo since a good many years when IBM let
> > go of them....
> 
> They are, yes.
> 
> My minimal experience of Lenovo _desktops_ is different and I didn't
> like them as much.
> 
> Secondly, I hate modern flat chiclet keyboards, so I don't have any
> newer Thinkpads. I have an X220 and a T420, and I'm looking for a
> W520, but nothing newer.
> 
> I used an X240 when I worked at Red Hat and it was a total pain with
> Linux... but then, I was using Fedora, and Fedora is a pain IMHO.
> 
> > >* You cannot boot from an NVMe disk in BIOS mode
> > >* You might be able to but only if the manufacturer put some kind of
> > >driver in the NVMe drive's firmware
> >
> > But if Ubuntu 20 fixed it when installing itself as described above, then maybe?
> 
> I honestly don't know. I am sure it _is_ possible to get a booting
> UEFI system on GPT on NVMe -- there are many such computers now!
> 
> It's transferring from an old BIOS box I don't know about.
> 
> > I have since read up more and it seems like a pretty straightforward operation.
> 
> It is.
> 
> > Yes, I have seen you around here quite a bit and recently I saw that you are a
> > little bit older than myself, but not by much...
> 
> :-)
> 
> > I've been doing electronics and software development for 40+ years but I have
> > only encountered Linux privately and mostly recently since I retired from my day
> > work 10+ years ago...
> 
> Good for you!
> 
> I had a daughter 2 years ago, when I was 51. (And I love being a dad!)
> 
> But I think I will be working until I drop dead now...
> 
> > I think that the 20.04 upgrade needs to be done first...
> 
> I agree.
> 
> > But then I also need to restructure my server a bit, primarily to move /home to
> > a partition of its own. It holds the bulk of disk space now (175+ GB) and most
> > of that are videos and such. Without that the system part is maybe 30 GB or so,
> > much simpler to handle.
> 
> Ah, yes, that will help.
> 
> > Thanks for your comments, always appreciating talking to another old hand!
> 
> :-) Mutual!
> 
> I've seen you over on the FreePascal lists as well, but as my attempt
> to get back into Pascal has not got far -- see "new daughter" above --
> I don't post much there.
> 
> -- 
> Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
> Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven at gmail.com
> Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
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> 
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