Moving Ubuntu installation ...

First some background details for the hardware nerds:

- old PC: Dell Optiplex GX620, Intel Pentium 4 2.80 GHz, 1 GB memory, 80 GB HD, ATI Radeon X600 (dual monitor)

- new PC: Dell Optiplex GX730, AND Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+, 4 GB memory, 200 GB HD, ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT (dual monitor)

A major improvement because I also run Windows XP in Virtualbox and slowdown when doing this was very noticable.

Step 1, backing up the system partition:

I have two partitions on the old PC: 10 GB (system), 70 GB (data).

The first partition I backed up with partimage using a live-cd and an USB hard drive. Partimage checks, compresses and also makes a backup of the MBR.

The second partition I didn't backup this way, after the OS move I just copied the files from the old PC to the new PC.

Before I put the partimage backup back on the new PC I partitioned it with fdisk (bye! bye! Vista Home):

- partition 1 (system), 20 GB

- partition 2 (swap), 2 GB

- partition 3 (data), 178 GB

Don't forget to add the bootable flag with fdisk to partition 1.

The new system partition is bigger then the old partition and we are going to need resize the restored filesystem to reflect this change.

After restoring partition 1 we need to:

- restore grub in the MBR

- resize the old filesystem to use the full 20 GB partition

To restore grub open a terminal (you are still booted with the live-cd) and type:

- sudo grub

The grub shell is started, type in this shell:

- find /boot/grub/stage1

This will return the location of your grub configuration, in my case hd0,0

Use these values to tell grub to use this location (use your own grub values!):

- root (hd0,0)

Then install grub in the MBR:

- setup (hd0)

Exit the grub shell with:

- quit

To resize the filesystem type, (use your own partition value!):

- e2fsck -f /dev/sda1

- resize2fs /dev/sda1

You can reboot now. Ubuntu will detect the new hardware and use the necessary new drivers.

Exception to this was in my case the videocard, Gnome started with it's default resolution 800x600.

This was easily fixed by removing the old driver and rebooting:

- Go to System -> Administration -> Hardware drivers

- Disable the videocard under 'Device driver' -> ATI accelerated graphics driver

- Reboot

After rebooting the correct driver will be automatically loaded.

I also needed to replace the UUID for the data partition in /etc/fstab. To find the new UUID type:

- sudo vol_id /dev/sda3

This will return the UUID:

ID_FS_USAGE=filesystem
ID_FS_TYPE=ext3
ID_FS_VERSION=1.0
ID_FS_UUID=a5185cdf-fd95-4bd9-a17d-2e77e78e755e
ID_FS_UUID_ENC=a5185cdf-fd95-4bd9-a17d-2e77e78e755e
ID_FS_LABEL=
ID_FS_LABEL_ENC=
ID_FS_LABEL_SAFE=