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Wondering if installation transfers is possible. (self.linux)

submitted 3 days ago by Lost_My_Mind to c/linux

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So on android in 2010 I used to be into the idea of rooting my phone, and installing custom roms.

Distros are essentially custom roms for your pc. Same concept.

There was a program called TWRP that I could use. Back then it would make a full backup of EVERYTHING on your internal drive. It was mostly used after you already had a custom rom.

But it backedup EVERYTHING. If you wrote a txt message as a draft, and didn't sent it, then backed up with TWRP, whenever you restored on a new phone, that txt draft was there too. It was literally like your phone took an all encompassing picture of everything on your phones internal drive, every single file and setting, and made a backup. Saving it to your sd card.

So I'm thinking, linux should theoretically be able to do this. Maybe it does.

What if my current install is on a 250gb drive, and I buy a completely different 4TB drive? What if I want to do this total backup, save the backup to a usb hard drive, then put in a NEW hard drive, and have it restore the backup so now my entire old hard drive is now on my new hard drive? And every setting, every file, every last detail is an exact replica.

Could I do that?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

VSS equivalent would be btrfs snapshots or zfs snapshots.

Can you really copy a VSS to a new disk? For a new install, at some point you'll need to reboot and go offline, so I don't see the point in trying to keep uptime. If uptime matters, dont upgrade a disk, replace the entire system.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

You can mount vss and clone it like you would an offline drive

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

You don't directly copy VSS to the new disk, it freezes a point in time that you can then backup with other software.