[lancorp]

I know I posted this question last week, but for the life of me, I can't find the post!

In any case...basic Dell Mini 9 with 4GB SSD and Ubuntu. Lot's of customization of mail, etc. I'd like to
move/copy/clone the existing 4GB SSD to a bigger one.

Is this easily done? I know practically nothing about Linux (I'm Windows and Mac), but I gave an Ubuntu to my son, figuring he couldn't really screw it up and he might actually learn something (linux).

Any links or help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[suprolla]

I think your best bet would be to go for a runcore and use the suggested cloning software. The onboard USB makes this such an easy upgrade.

runcore-ssd-upgrade-guide-w-pics--t4483.html

[bowill]

I couldn't find a reference to any Linux-based disk cloning software in the guide that "suprolla" recommended. If you need to do this without Windows, then I suggest gparted. You can download a live ISO image and install it to a USB key. This should work nicely in combination with a runcore drive that has a mini-usb slave port.

If you end up buying a different brand of SSD, then you will likely need to either image the hard drive or image the individual partitions. The gparted page I linked to above has links to some GPL partition imaging software (PartImage looks like the best one for this purpose). After imaging the drive/partitions from the old drive, you should be able to install the new drive and restore the partitions to it, after which, you can use gparted to resize the partitions and/or create new partitions with any unused space. I haven't done this myself, so I can only suggest that this process should work ... it may require some trial and error to get it right.

[reflex]

Copying all the files (hidden files, too) under "/home/steve" or "/home/susan" or whatever is enough to preserve all of a single user's data and settings. You'll still need to reinstall programs, but that's trivially easy for anything installed via a package manager (like Synaptic).

When I reinstall a computer or migrate to a new drive, I like to start with a fresh install and then selectively copy files and folders over from the old "/home/xxx". For example, copying the ".mozilla" folder over is enough to preserve a user's Firefox addons, history, bookmarks, etc.

[ugm6hr]

partimage is designed to clone and restore partitions.

I have never used it on my Mini, but no reason it shouldn't work.