If I clone Ubuntu to a bigger hard drive / different dimensions, will it 'just work'?
 

This may seem super obvious, but I've only ever cloned my dual-boot system. Because of the Windows XP etc. problems of cloning the disk to a bigger drive / different make, I also had to buy and clone to a backup hard drive that was the exact same as the primary hard drive. I've continued doing this through the years.

I've now got a Ubuntu-only machine, and I'd like to make a clone of the hard drive. I've a second hard drive lying around - different size, different make. If I cloned the Ubuntu drive to this one, will it work - upon boot up, will the drive 'auto-adjust' to the new size?

Thanks a ton!!

Q: Exactly how did you "clone" it?

It should if its done as an archive to preserve links, assuming the rest of the computer's hardware is exactly the same.

There are many different ways to clone drives/partitions. You have several things to consider , first of all you will probably want to do a full disk clone to make sure the MBR with the Grub bootloader is copied over or you will have some fun trying to install grub again . Then you will need to either create a new partition using the free slack space you have on the disk , or find a way to inflate the partition your using, this all depends on the filesystem you are using. I suggest doing some careful research and consideration for this, and when your ready try clonezilla. It works really well and can do full cloning byte by byte or partition only cloning, as well as image cloning to an SSH server or CIFS share, and its also does encryption. Another option which I use frequently is to create a separate partition for my /Home directory and use clonezilla to back up just that partition. Then when I'm restoring a full build it's quicker. Most of the time it's just easier to reinstall straight up and update, than it is to restore and update, unless you have done a lot of installs and custom configs. So to answer your question plainly as long as the drive you are cloning to is equal or greater in size it will work bare metal as long as you do a disk to disk clone using clonezilla it will boot and be an EXACT replica of the existing one, which is why you will need to resize some of the partitions.

Thank you so much for all the answers, I greatly appreciate it. I would use Easeus, and it would be for a computer used solely to store and manage images from a security camera.

By way of background, I use Easeus disk copy for my regular day to day computer. I do the clone every 3 to 6 months for the Fedora LVM partition that has all the "OS" files and software (since the backup was initially made as a clone, and the LVM partitions have the same names, I've been unable to mount the cloned LVM partition and rsync that), and use rsync daily for the FAT32 and NTFS partitions, which have all my information - documents, emails, pics, etc. .

For this security camera computer, I figure I need to make just one clone of it; I've configured the system how I want it in regards to Apache, FTP, and dynamic display / sorting / storing of the security camera image files. I don't care too much about the images I capture - unless they're recorded break-ins, in which case I'd back it up then / drop the hard drive off with the local police. Since I have a second hard drive lying around, I thought I could just use that to clone this security camera computer's drive, so that if it ever dies, I can just pop in this ready and fully functioning backup.

Thanks a ton again for taking the time to give me your responses so far!

Clone as a file by file almost always works.

Clone as in bit by bit can be a real stinker to fix.

Sounds like a pretty cool setup.. I've just been using my dropbox account to drop my security camera images onto.. however I have mine configured for capture on motion only so it doesn't fill up my account in an hour.

Hi tekhead2 -

Like you, I set my camera to just capture on motion. I've been considering using rsync every 15 minutes or so (or gzip and then sftp every night?) to copy the files offsite. However, I figure if there's a break-in and the the computer is destroyed/stolen, the burglars are not going to wait 15 minutes for the images to backup. I used to have all the images save directly to an offsite server via FTP, but the problem was that when I installed a higher resolution security camera, I figured that because my upload DSL speed was too slow, there would be too much of a bottleneck for the images to upload in a reasonable amount of time (again, the 15 minute burglar wait). So, I decided it was better to buy the small computer (it's a FIT PC) and just hide that somewhere in the house. Since the house is not wired, and I always have WiFi reliability issues, I'm using Ethernet over Powerline. It works flawlessly, and so I was looking to make a backup.

If you want my php or any info, let me know - I'd be happy to send you code or further discuss setup specs.

I used a bigger hard drive, different model, too, and used EASEUS to clone the entire disk. And, it worked! So now I have my backup in case that primary HD dies. Anyways, just wanted to update that it worked.

Thanks everyone for responding to my original post.