Moving hard drive to new computer

[Jokerman64]

I have a new mini PC, it is running Windows 11 and it has a spare bay to extend storage. I had an old computer that had several drive bays and I had a 500Gb ssd with Linux Mint installed on it and I would like to run Mint on the new computer.
The way I see it, I have two options;
1) Put the Linux drive int the new computer, obviously I cannot put this in the new computer and expect it to run as Linux would have the specs of the old computer. So I would have to format this and do a fresh install. How could I format this under windows, as windows does not recognise Linux drives?
2) Or put the drive into an enclosure and run it via USB cable. I have been told this is possible but I do not know how to do this. (Again the drive would have to be formatted and a fresh install would be required)
Any help for you guys would be much apprecitated.

 

[Condobloke]

G'day jokerman, Welcome to Linux.org

What version of Linux Mint is on the 500GB ?

 

[KGIII]

obviously I cannot put this in the new computer and expect it to run as Linux would have the specs of the old compute

You can do that, actually. I've done so numerous times. I'll get a new computer and move my drive to the new computer. It picks up where it left off just fine. If you had proprietary drivers, it'll just use the generic ones - even if the hardware is different. Like, if you had an Nvidia graphics card and the new one had an AMD graphics card, it'd boot and just use the generic AMD drivers until you installed any proprietary drivers.

In your case, this may not be so simple - but you could do what I just mentioned.

Your trouble will be your boot loader.

I'd try booting to a live version (the installation media you used to install Linux, typically a USB thumb drive) and then simply trying sudo update grub to see if it fixes the boot loader.

 

[Jokerman64]

Great, I will give that a try over the weekend.

 

[Brickwizard]

Welcome to the forums
as others have said, yes you can, however the Linux must be suitable to match your CPU type, and bit rate, so if you took it from a AMD64 [or intel64] you can't run it on an ARM CPU or 64 bit on a 32bit system,

Also, you say old mint, in which case you may do best saving all folders/docs/Picts etc to an external storage and installing the latest mint [Mint LMDE is slightly lighter than Mint22 Ubuntu version]you can install a new bootloader at the same time

 

[Jokerman64]

G'day jokerman, Welcome to Linux.org

What version of Linux Mint is on the 500GB ?

Not sure, over two years old.

 

[Jokerman64]

Welcome to the forums
as others have said, yes you can, however the Linux must be suitable to match your CPU type, and bit rate, so if you took it from a AMD64 [or intel64] you can't run it on an ARM CPU or 64 bit on a 32bit system,

Also, you say old mint, in which case you may do best saving all folders/docs/Picts etc to an external storage and installing the latest mint [Mint LMDE is slightly lighter than Mint22 Ubuntu version]you can install a new bootloader at the same time

The version is over 2 years old (probably over 4), so a fresh install would be the best option. But as I asked, how do I format a Linux drive in Windows as Windows does not recognise Linux drives.

 

[Brickwizard]

Linux drive in Windows as Windows does not recognise Linux drives.

OK so just breifly
switch off your machine, connect up your old Mint drive ,switch on your machine whilst tickling the short boot menu key [varies on make/model of machine]
From the short boot menu select the drive with mint on and hit enter, the old mint should boot from there.

 

[KGIII]

From the short boot menu select the drive with mint on and hit enter, the old mint should boot from there.

I thought about that and, if I'm understanding, they were dual-booting. So, there may be no bootloader on the drive.

If that's the case, I'm not sure if it'd work just by trying to boot to that medium. I believe it still needs a boot loader to tell it what to do - though, to be clear, I've not dual-booted in a long time.

You can boot directly without a boot loader using UEFI. Though, they said it was old. With EUFI can directly boot the Linux kernel if it knows the kernel exists. You can select it in the UEFI (I keep wanting to type BIOS) settings. I'm not sure if it'd boot to the drive without setting that up.

(To explain where I was going, and why I was going there, with my original post.)

 

[Brickwizard]

they were dual-booting.

Possibly but my understanding is the drive with mint came from another machine , and so assumed when it installed to that machine Grub2 was also installed to that drive, if not then he will need to connect the old ha, connect another drive to take the files he wants to keep, and boot the machine to a live test Linux and use that to move anything he wishes t keep to the storage drive or his cloud account [again assuming as a Windows user he has one]

 

[KGIII]

if not then he will need to connect the old ha

Or just update GRUB... That should do the trick, regardless. GRUB is pretty good at finding other OSes but it's not always the solution.

But, I agree with what you said as it'd be my course of action. I'd save any data that I needed and just do a nice clean installation. This one is very out of date and upgrading to the newest supported version may be a challenge. If there's no data worth saving, even better. Just follow the normal procedures for a clean installation.

That's what I'd do in their situation.

 

[APTI]

I have a new mini PC, it is running Windows 11 and it has a spare bay to extend storage. I had an old computer that had several drive bays and I had a 500Gb ssd with Linux Mint installed on it and I would like to run Mint on the new computer.
The way I see it, I have two options;
1) Put the Linux drive int the new computer, obviously I cannot put this in the new computer and expect it to run as Linux would have the specs of the old computer. So I would have to format this and do a fresh install. How could I format this under windows, as windows does not recognise Linux drives?
2) Or put the drive into an enclosure and run it via USB cable. I have been told this is possible but I do not know how to do this. (Again the drive would have to be formatted and a fresh install would be required)
Any help for you guys would be much apprecitated.

just plug it in. I do this also all the time. 19 out of 20 times it will just work. now as for multi booting on the system. Not sure how mini the PC is but if you have expansion slots I would do this for dual boot. I have a triple boot. linux fedora, windows 10 and windows 7 done this way. boot loaders do not need to be adjusted. nothing needs adjustment. just check the post below.

Thread 'Dual and Multi boot systems'

Oct 30, 2023

One thing many people do is make systems that will boot more than one choice of operating systems. This little article is a new and better way to do this. Often we have to fix the multi boot systems because an update changed something and damaged our grub configuration. Windows is especially good at doing this. So here is the best way to do this that allows you do make a multiboot system without having to do anything to grub or play with configurations.

This can only be done in a system that can accept more than one drive and an expansion card.

What you will need.

1.. One hard...

• APTI
• Replies: 8
• Forum: General Linux Topics

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[bob466]

You're not allowed to do this because m$ says so...you have to buy another license and maybe a new computer too.

If you're using Linux of cause you can do this...I've done this a few times. I can take out my Tower's SSD and put it in my Laptop or I can create an Image of either and put it on the other.

 

[bob466]

Silly me...I forgot to mention two years ago my Tower's 12 year old Motherboard failed which was Legacy.

I had to get a new Motherboard...Ram and CPU as new one was socket 1700 and UEFI only...put in my Mint Cinnamon SSD and it worked just fine. The only thing was it still showed to old Motherboard in the Terminal...

When the next version on Cinnamon came out...problem solved...Linux is great.