[GTALUG] Swapping ThinkPad drive

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Nov 25, 2021 at 10:17:34AM -0500, William Park via talk wrote:
> For /, /home, ... it's simple copy.  Since you're using external USB, don't
> use "dd".  "cp -a" should be good enough.  Or, "tar -cf -".
> Never used "cpio".
> 
> For /boot, it's different can of worm.  You can copy over the content, but
> you have to update /boot/efi/EFI/DistroX/, so that your motherboard "BIOS"
> knows about it.  I'd recommend, install your distro on the new SSD using
> UEFI.  Then, update files for your old kernel.  That way, the structure is
> created for you.
> 
> Personally, I don't like UEFI.  If you change motherboard, you can't boot.
> Personal experience!

You can if you have a bootloader installed at the default path.
That's why UEFI bootable USB keys work fine.

So if your disk has /efi/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI then it should auto boot on
any UEFI motherboard.  /efi being the ESP boot partition.

Booting something else requires an entry in the UEFI NVRAM.

-- 
Len Sorensen