Which procedure would you guys recommend for copying data from my existing HDD to a new one? I think I might buy an SSHD for my laptop, to improve I/O performance (only got 1 bay, so an SSD is out). My current HDD is 500Gb, I’ll probably replace it with a 500Gb SSHD, but might be a 1Tb drive if I have more money than I thought!
Anyway, what’s the best process for this? I’m assuming I can borrow/buy an external enclosure so I can mount both drives simultaneously (in fact, I think I might have a USB2 one somewhere…). Use a CLI dd command? Something like Clonezilla? Archive the lot then restore it onto the new drive? Or use a bog-standard liveCD, then just GParted the new drive & copy folders over in file manager? I guess I’d prefer the last option as I’m most familiar with the idea of it (plus, it would work in the “upgrade” scenario), but I’d be worried about permissions & UUID issues.
Got a couple of NTFS partitions with Windows & the system recovery partitions on it, not sure how to pick those up using the liveCD method? I guess this is where dd comes in…? This isn’t a UEFI system, if that makes a difference (Mint 17 is the distro, Win7 on the Windows partition)
I’ve always just used clonezilla
From what I can read about clonezilla, ignoring the fact that the UI is appalling, is that it’ll work for the 500G-500G transfer, but crash and burn at the 500G-1T transfer (looking a bit more likely, as the price difference is only £13)
I’m pretty sure I’ve cloned 1tb drives with clonezilla before … as long as the target drive is larger than the source I’ve never had a problem
So what happens to the remaining space? Presumably it’s unallocated?
Is it safe to move the (logical) Linux ones up, so I can expand the NTFS partition (into the space formerly held by the Linux partitions), and also to expand /home to fill the remaining space? I know it’s hard to understand without a diagram or an fdisk printout, hopefully you can get what I mean (otherwise it’s a Paint JPEG job ;D)
Yes, with a default clone you’d have to resize the partitions afterwards … or you could try the -k1 option to proportionally expand the partitons
See here:
http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/doc/03_Disk_to_disk_clone/advanced/05-advanced-param.php
It’s a little more complicated than that, as I want to grow the NTFS partition, and the /home partition, but not the others (I’m a pain in the butt, I know).
Anyway, you’ve given me a good plan for going forward, so thanks 
Oh, will clonezilla successfully clone the recovery partition, and the “system reserved” partition (as reported by Windows Disk Management)?
It should do yes, as it’s a sector by sector clone … not a copy.
As you suggest it’s only a starting point … the good thing is it’s non destructive, so you can try multiple configurations or tools
True, I can try it out, then set the BIOS to boot from the USB enclosure, and if it doesn’t look right, I know something has messed up in the process ;D