I need help with upgrading Encrypted Hard Drive
 

My original drive is 160gb, running Ubuntu 12.04 server. It is Encrypted.

I have a new 1GB drive.

How do I clone my existing encrypted drive?

Thanks

Never a one answer question on clones.

In your case even being able to mount the partition with password may or may not help in the copy process.

It may be possible to use a tool like clonezilla/redobackup to copy it if it can open the file. Otherwise it would do a bit by bit. That alone may need to have some edits later. In fact any distro may need edits before or after clone when using any tool.
It may be that you can use partimage or gparted to copy the partition and then fix boot issues. Many distro's use grub and other entries to name stuff by ID or name instead of simple /dev/sda1.

You may be able to tar, cpio or such most of it over or maybe rsync even.

There are some live state apps but they are for pay.

Maybe Acronis can do it.

hi
 

Is it possible to decrypt hard drive and than clone it, extend partition and encrypt again..??

I have Acronis TI 2011, will ask them is it possible or not..

That's most likely to be the best option.

For the actual copy process after the de-crypt you could go with dd and enlarge the partitions to your needs (fdisk, resize2fs etc.) after the copy and before you re-encrypt.

Since the sizes of your drives are quite different you want to have an extra eye on block sizes etc

hi
 

So what would be the best way to decrypt drive?

I never did this before and do not want to screw data up :)

Your HDD encryption software should be able to do it. What do you use?

hi
 

I encrypted with Ubuntu during installation.

I did not use hard drive encryption software.

If I'm understanding correctly, you installed Ubuntu, and checked the box to encrypt your home folder?

And both the / and /home folders are both on the same partition, on the 160GB drive?

If this is the case, then you needn't take any more precautions than for an unencrypted drive upgrade. Make sure you back up your documents first, (you should ALWAYS do this frequently, and especially right before any operation with the hard drive), and then do the clone. Clonezilla is a decent choice.

So once I clone it how do I increase my partition so that I can use all available space of the new 1TB drive?

If you use Clonezilla, I'm pretty sure it has the option to expand a partition as well.