Re: Copying one drive to a smaller one.
On Mon, May 09, 2022 at 11:54:16AM -0700, David Christensen wrote:
> On 5/8/22 18:54, paulf@quillandmouse.com wrote:
> > Folks:
> >
> > Situation: I have a 500G boot drive (root, swap, home) I'd like to copy
> > to a new 250G drive which must then also be bootable (yes, there's
> > enough room). This are EFI drives. I can use "dd", but I don't know
> > the proper parameters, and as I understand it, copying a 500G to a 250G
> > drive is Bad(tm). I could use "rsync", but I don't think the second
> > 250G drive will boot just because I copied the files over to it. I
> > suspect I would have an additional step needed to make the drive
> > bootable.
> >
> > Can someone outline the proper procedure here?
>
>
> Resizing and moving a Debian instance from a 500 GB drive to a 250 GB drive
> requires a lot of expertise.
>
>
> I would take the KISS approach -- backup the system configuration files and
> data, remove the 500 GB drive, install the 250 GB drive, do a fresh install
> onto the 250 GB drive, and reconfigure/ restore.
>
>
> David
>
I also agree: then all you have to do is copy across data you wish to retain.
Alternatively, you can plug in the new drive and do a minimal install on it.
Use
dpkg --get-selections > somefilename
to get a list of packages installed on one system and write it into somefile.
dpkg --set-selections < somefilename
will write that list for Debian's most basic package manager.
apt update ; apt dist-upgrade
will then use that information to isntall the same package list onto the
second machine as exists on the first machine - but that's complex.
With every good wish, as ever,
Andy Cater
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