Filesystem – How to Move Ubuntu to an SSD

filesystemhard drivepartitioningssd

My current situation is:

One hard disk
Dual boot Ubuntu 11.04 and Windows 7. Partitions:
- 100MB Windows System thingy
- 144GB Main Windows
- 160GB Ubuntu
- 4GB Swap
- 12GB System Restore stuff

Now I want to install an 80GB SSD and move Ubuntu to it. AFAIK I need to:

Shrink the 160GB Ubuntu partition to 80GB
Copy it over to the SSD
Change fstab to mount the SSD as /

How do I do the second? And what do I need to do about Grub?

Best Answer

1) Copying files

You want to copy the FILES, not the whole partition ( including its free space ), so you don't need to resize the partition first. Boot from the livecd and mount both the HD and SSD ( after formatting a partition on the SSD of course ), then copy all of the files over:

sudo cp -Tax /media/hd /media/ssd

Use the correct names for the hd and ssd mount points of course. Then you just need to edit the /etc/fstab on the ssd to point to the new fs UUID ( you can look it up with blkid ). Finally you need to install grub on the ssd.

2) Dealing with GRUB

a) Command line:

sudo -s
for f in sys dev proc ; do mount --bind /$f /media/ssd/$f ; done
chroot /media/ssd
grub-install /dev/ssd
update-grub

Of course, use the correct device for /dev/ssd. The whole disk, not a partition number.

b) "Recommended repair" magic button in Boot-Repair:

^{https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair}

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && boot-repair

enter image description here

Finally reboot and make sure your bios is set to boot from the SSD.

Related Solutions

Partitioning SSD and HDD for Ubuntu Installation – How to Guide

Actually, installing Linux into an SSD is very good... with a little bit of modification.

Install Windows first to the HDD. Only once Windows is installed and working OK do you bring in Ubuntu.

Put the swap partition on the hard drive as well as /var and /tmp because those are written to constantly; moving those off the SSD will prolong the life of the SSD to match the HDD life, because older SSDs live much longer if you don't write to them constantly, and swap, /tmp and /var are the areas which are written to heavily.

(Note: Now that Linux supports TRIM, modern SSDs often outlast HDDs.)

Also put /home in an ext4 partition on the hard drive, for if the SSD fails for whatever reason it is much more difficult to recover data from it than an HDD. Resizing the partition(s) created by Windows is easy, menu-driven, and painless.

/ (AKA root) takes up as much space on the SSD as you have available. Ubuntu should fit well into the 24GB you have available, since it typically is only 6GB, but if the / partition grows to take it all you can move some parts of the filesystem off to the HDD flexibly.

Other configuration modifications help as well, such as enabling TRIM.

Here's testimony which shows Linux LIKES SSDs... What about the performance enhancement when using an SSD as the main disk? and Setup for dual disk (SSD+HDD) with /home partition .

Partitioning Hard Drive SSD – How to Reorganize Partitions with HDD and SSD

Please, don't do anything until someone else reviews it. I could miss something.

As /home is already configured, move /usr/share

Using a live CD, start gparted
Unmount swap, lvm's and any mounted partitions
Resize the partition you like to get space from, apply

If that partition is so big, try removing space from the end. So gparted will not shift the whole partition.
Create the needed partition as ext4, apply
Still using gparted: Right click on the new partition → Properties → Copy UUID
Mount the created (share) partition with the ubuntu partition which gonna copy from
Copy share folder. cp -a to preserve all (permissions, ownership, links..)

Replace <ubuntu_part> and <share_part> with your partitions mounting paths
```
sudo cp -a /media/<ubuntu_part>/usr/share/* /media/<share_part>/
```

Rename /usr/share as backup

sudo mv /media/<ubuntu_part>/usr/share /media/<ubuntu_part>/usr/backup_share

Backup /etc/fstab

sudo cp /media/<ubuntu_part>/etc/fstab /media/<ubuntu_part>/etc/backup_fstab

Same as /home add /usr/share, (use UUID copied before) something similar to:

sudo gedit /media/<ubuntu_part>/etc/fstab

# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=e3725608-ee2f-408d-9d53-4f172070ca1f /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# /home was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=1063be7e-2105-434c-a9e9-75cf3d02e969 /home           ext4    defaults        0       2
# /usr/share was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=34c6fc4b-3c63-4e58-a3dd-3b70926c58c9 /usr/share      ext4    defaults        0       2
# swap was on /dev/sda2 during installation
UUID=bde0f592-e4fe-4eb6-9d75-eec161e349a1 none            swap    sw              0       0

Lines starts with # are just comments

Reboot

If it's OK, delete backups

sudo rm /media/<ubuntu_part>/etc/backup_fstab
sudo rm -R /media/<ubuntu_part>/usr/backup_share

Note:

Disk Usage Analyzer (or du on command line) can be used get size info. It is more practical to analyze an already used system so all tools needed installed. So space distribution depends on user behavior, some install much -doc's, -dev's, wine programs in /home/user/.wine, ...