Getting new hardware - can I just move the disk?

[Liam Proven]

On Tue, 12 Oct 2021 at 13:12, Bo Berglund <bo.berglund at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> So my plan failed... :(

Oh dear.

> I tried to use the Ubuntu 20 Live USB I had used to boot on the Lenovo PC in
> order to boot the main eMachine server so I could use the GParted application to
> make a full image of the server.
> I was going to use the partition copy-paste between drives as you suggested
> earlier. But...
>
> I have a USB connected hard drive with 221GB space free and the current used
> size of my Ubuntu system is now 159GB.

OK.

> So I wanted to use GParted to copy the existing partitions over to the external
> drive before starting the system upgrade.

Sounds like a good plan.

> But the PC completely refuses to boot off of the USB! And this is an 11 years
> old PC, before any UEFI..
>
> I have entered the PC BIOS and set the boot order to start with USB, but it does
> not help, always boots back into the 18.04 system...

What is the old PC? If it is not a name-brand PC, then what is its
motherboard make and model? And, ideally, what is its the version
number of its BIOS?

On many PCs you can press a key to select a boot device just for that
boot, without changing the order in the BIOS settings. This is most
commonly F12 but it could be F10 or something else. Given the make &
model of the PC or the motherboard, I can probably find out what that
keystroke is.

> Why does not the USB on sdc show up here?

Because it is not mounted, I suspect.

> Is this the main problem here, that the USB images are not bootable?
> But it does boot on the Lenovo, albeit with a lot of extra effort.

If it's bootable on 1 computer, any computer, then it *is* bootable. :-)

> I googled more and found Rufus as a recommended application to make bootable USB
> devices from ISO. So I did use it and made a new USB but the same thing happens,
> it just boots my existing 18.04 system...

It's good for Windows ISOs but it's slow in my experience.

> Maybe I have to burn a DVD with the ISO image and load that into this system?

>From a later message, I gather this worked but the display was corrupted.

What is the GPU or the graphics card?

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