Clone mostly empty 500gb linux os drive to 240gb drive?

cdoublejj · July 21, 2020, 10:29pm

i give up with clonezilla anyone know how i can clone a mostly empty 500gb linux os drive to 240gb drive?

Adubs · July 21, 2020, 10:37pm

What issue are you having with clonezilla?

gordonthree · July 21, 2020, 10:40pm

Shrink the partition and then use dd

nx2l · July 21, 2020, 10:40pm

Is the filesystem shrinkable?

cdoublejj · July 21, 2020, 10:59pm

what programs do you use to do that? gparted?

gordonthree · July 22, 2020, 12:15am

Yes, typically booting from a live image usb (like knoppix)

Cpn-Neemo · July 22, 2020, 12:46am

This or shrink then use clonezilla if that workflow is better for you. I usually do a clonezilla image for back up. Usb boot to shrink volume and clonezilla to clone to new drive.

Usually going from 500gog to 256gig spinner to ssd for friends laptops

cdoublejj · July 22, 2020, 5:18am

yeah i had to do the shrink with gparted. with NTFS and FAT there are pay for options that resize for you. this be a paint point for *nix unless of anyone knows of any sweet pay software that can do it?

hem · July 22, 2020, 9:26pm

@cdoublejj I upgraded several of our laptops at work from HDD to SSD, I found a freemium software package, first 3-5 links on Google, where shrinking/cloning/growing was in the free part of the software. Samsung also has a tool that can do it on the system it’s running on.

cdoublejj · July 23, 2020, 3:16am

i’ve seen this but, only for windows / ntfs drives

rcxb · July 23, 2020, 5:27am

The whole point of a clone is to be exactly identical. When you need anything to be different, cloning is a square peg in a round hole.

Partition the new drive the way you want it, do a minimal OS install on it, then tar or rsync the contents of the old drive over to the new one. Done.

FaunCB · July 23, 2020, 1:33pm

I’m even lazier than that. I just direct write the drive then open gparted and have it fix it XDDD

cdoublejj · July 23, 2020, 7:36pm

i’m unfamiliar with the language you are speaking

tin · July 27, 2020, 5:43am

I’ve never had Clonezilla succeed in copying Linux drives - even when not shrinking them.

My default technique now is to simply create the filesystem as I want it on the new drive, copy over the files (remember to use a method that won’t skip hidden .files) and chroot to the new partition to install GRUB (I’m normally doing this to make old systems faster with SSDs, so UEFI isn’t a thing on most of them).