Not specifically Archlinux, but I am using Archlinux on my laptop, so I thought I’ll ask here.

I am planing to replace my 1 TB M.2 SSD in my laptop with a 2 TB M.2 SSD, and I am wondering how to clone the whole 1 TB SSD and restore it onto the 2 TB M.2 SSD.

I have read about people using $dd for that, but I never did that. Can anybody confirm that this is possible?

I am running two partitions, one boot and the other one is a crypt device with btrfs + subvolumes inside.

Is there anything I have to consider, before doing this?

Thank you for your time.

  • pkruEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    The Arch wiki has some really good info on using dd for cloning. I’ve done it myself successfully with dd, but double and triple check to make sure your command is correct before continuing. Both drives would need to be connected to the same machine at the same time (new drive in a USB enclosure or in a spare PCIe slot)

    https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dd#Disk_cloning_and_restore

    It might be worthwhile to check out GUI alternatives to dd if you feel more comfortable in a GUI vs terminal:

    https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Disk_cloning

    • g7s@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Thank you, would it not be possible to dump the cloned disk into a file? I don’t have a second PCIe slot in my laptop… I was hoping to connect an external drive, dump the nvme, replace it, and restore it.

      • xoggy@programming.devEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        Can you clone from the nvme to the external drive then clone the external drive over to the new nvme once installed? If you have other stuff on the disk you can clone to a file but it will be a slower process:

        dd if=/dev/sdX conv=sync,noerror bs=64K | gzip -c > /path/to/my-disk.image.gz
        • g7s@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Thank you, I ordered a USB case for my new m.2 now :)

      • pkruEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I’ve done something like that before with ddrescue though the example on the Arch wiki ddrescue page shows how to copy an entire drive to another drive. Here’s how to backup to a file instead:

        sudo ddrescue -f -n /dev/sda1 /path/to/backup.hdimage /path/to/backup.mapfile

        But I’d reference the docs just to double-check: https://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/manual/ddrescue_manual.html

        You might need to restore the image via Arch recovery mode with a bootable USB drive loaded with the Arch ISO however.