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Need help setting up new SSD as boot drive. (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 3 months ago by Marafon@sh.itjust.works to c/linux@programming.dev

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Howdy All! I recently got a bitchin' new SSD, a Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB and I am struggle bussing trying to make it my new boot drive on my computer while keeping all of my programs and settings and things just the way I like them. Specs are I7 13700K cpu and an RTX 4070 gpu plugged into an MSI MAG Z790 Tomahawk Wifi mobo all working harmoniously to run Opensuse Tumbleweed.

Things I have done so far:

Googled that shit, didn't find much that helped me unfortunately. Found some forum where a guy was trying to move over to an SSD from a HDD and then remove the HDD, whereas I just want to change the boot drive to SSD and continue using both drives in the same rig. Someone else in that thread recommended clonezilla but then further down I read something about UUIDs(?) being copied as well and being unable to use both drives in the same computer or it can cause issues and corrupt data. That scared me off that.
Tried using the Yast Partitioner tool but the scary warning box it makes you click through and the general lack of any clue what I'm doing scared me off that.
Decided to just fresh install Opensuse Tumbleweed onto SSD with usb and then mount the HDD so that I can just copy everything over that way. Or so I thought. First I ran into the issue of the /home located in HDD not being viewable by my user on the SSD, I guess. Fixed that by unmounting the drive and remounting it with the following appended to the end of the mount command '-o subvol=/' , I got that from google as well. Now I'm able to view things in /home on HDD from the user on SSD and I've even copied some things over. However I'm unable to access the .snapshots folder in the root directory of HDD which I intended to copy over the latest snapshot and use it on the SSD install to bring all of my non /home stuff over.

So I'm kinda stuck in the middle of transferring over now. I have an inclination toward being lazy so I don't really want to spend time installing all of the flatpaks and configuring the OS again if I don't have to. Mostly because I've already had one false start with Linux and went ahead and started fresh so this would be the third time having to set everything up again from scratch. Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated!

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[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You don't even mention attempting to change the boot order in your CMOS/BIOS. Have you done that, or manually this drive as a boot target?

[–] Marafon@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Sorry I can boot into either one and can change boot order via bios, yes. I'm trying to merge two installs now basically. I want my SSD to be my one and only boot drive but have all of the settings and programs from the HDD brought over to the fresh install. And then use both drives at the same time. If that makes sense. Sorry for any confusion.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

Okay, so that clarifies it a bit. Unfortunately, you can't just merge the two different installs, but what you CAN do is just clone the existing SSD over to the new one, them make that your boot drive. That seems to be the simplest option for you.

[–] dirtycrow@programming.dev 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I highly recommend the man pages versus what is on Google. Type ‘man’ or ‘man -k’ to search them. Also available on the web for your particular distro.

Also you might wanna increase the block size in dd. And, it might be faster to use dump and restore, since that isn’t copying empty space.

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.org 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

So let me get that straight. You have an external drive that you want to boot from. What's with the HDD where does that came from and what's that about?

In any case I wouldn't recommend to regular boot from an external device but from an internal HDD/,SDD.

[–] Marafon@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

No, sorry. My computer had a single HDD. Now I have a new SSD that I would like to add to the machine and use in conjunction with that HDD.

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.org 3 points 3 months ago

Well that's easy then. Install the SSD, boot from your usb stick with your preferred Linux distribution. Install Linux to your nvme0 device (that's your SSD) and let the installer format it in the recommended way.

Then after the installation reboot into your new Linux. If the old bootloader triggers instead, you need to change the boot order so that your SSD boots first.

[–] sxan@midwest.social 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

What boot loader do you use? Grub and REFind are the most common, but there are others: Clover, LILO, Lemine, systemd-boot, syslinux... how you tell your computer which thing you want you boot from depends on your boot loader.

However, I suspect the issue is more simple: did you go into your BIOS and switch where the firmware which device to try to boot from? If you've added a new HD and you want to boot from it, this is _always_¹ required.

Ok, not always. I suppose there exists some BIOS that always shows you a menu and asks which device you want to use, but that's uncommon.

[–] Marafon@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago

I'm 99% sure I'm using Grub. I did go into my Bios to change the boot order and I also have it set up currently where it will give me a few seconds at startup to choose which drive I want to boot from while I figure my mess out.