I have a homelab server. It’s an old workstation that now runs all sorts of services for me, from Plex to Kubernetes and Jenkins. It’s extremely useful since it allows me to test ideas without going to the cloud. It runs Ubuntu server edition so everything is done over SSH.
The problem is that it originally only had an old hard disk inside. It wasn’t very big, and I’m out of space so I needed an upgrade. I have a new SSD and 2 larger HDDs that will run as a RAID (more on that in the future). I need to transfer the OS and all the files to the new SSD without reinstalling Ubuntu.
Technically, I could reinstall everything since it’s all managed with Ansible, but that seemed like a bad solution.
I am not a Linux Admin, so my approach might not be the best. I pieced this together from blogs, man pages, plus some trial and error. It’s not perfect, but it worked for me.
Drive Partitions
First, I installed the new SSD and added the SATA port to the BIOS. When the system started, I checked the disks.
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$ lsblk
sda 8:0 0 111.8G 0 disk
sdb 8:16 0 465.8G 0 disk
├─sdb1 8:17 0 1M 0 part
├─sdb2 8:18 0 2G 0 part /boot
└─sdb3 8:19 0 463.8G 0 part
├─ubuntu--vg-ubuntu--lv 253:0 0 100G 0 lvm /
└─ubuntu--vg-media 253:1 0 363.8G 0 lvm /mnt/media0
For some reason, my old HDD was in slot b, and so my new SSD is going in slot a.
A lot of blogs will tell you to use something like gparted to set up the partitions but since I’m doing everything over SSH I am going to use fdisk. First I checked the drives.
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$ fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sdb: 465.76 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Disk model: ST500DM002-1SB10
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 55A4C222-9CCB-4298-B2A0-A0ED180F2DAB
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sdb1 2048 4095 2048 1M BIOS boot
/dev/sdb2 4096 4198399 4194304 2G Linux filesystem
/dev/sdb3 4198400 976771071 972572672 463.8G Linux filesystem
Disk /dev/sda: 111.8 GiB, 120040980480 bytes, 234455040 sectors
Disk model: WDC WDS120G2G0A-
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Next using fdisk I reproduced the 3 partitions. I kept partitions 1 and 2 the same size as the old disk and used the rest of the space for partition 3.
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$ fdisk /dev/sda
Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.37.2).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.
Device does not contain a recognized partition table.
Created a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0xd94e439a.
Command (m for help): m
Help:
DOS (MBR)
a toggle a bootable flag
b edit nested BSD disklabel
c toggle the dos compatibility flag
Generic
d delete a partition
F list free unpartitioned space
l list known partition types
n add a new partition
p print the partition table
t change a partition type
v verify the partition table
i print information about a partition
Misc
m print this menu
u change display/entry units
x extra functionality (experts only)
Script
I load disk layout from sfdisk script file
O dump disk layout to sfdisk script file
Save & Exit
w write table to disk and exit
q quit without saving changes
Create a new label
g create a new empty GPT partition table
G create a new empty SGI (IRIX) partition table
o create a new empty DOS partition table
s create a new empty Sun partition table
Once I was done the disks looked like this:
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$ fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sdb: 465.76 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Disk model: ST500DM002-1SB10
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 55A4C222-9CCB-4298-B2A0-A0ED180F2DAB
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sdb1 2048 4095 2048 1M BIOS boot
/dev/sdb2 4096 4198399 4194304 2G Linux filesystem
/dev/sdb3 4198400 976771071 972572672 463.8G Linux filesystem
Disk /dev/sda: 111.8 GiB, 120040980480 bytes, 234455040 sectors
Disk model: WDC WDS120G2G0A-
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xd94e439a
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 * 2048 4095 2048 1M 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 4096 4198399 4194304 2G 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 4198400 234455039 230256640 109.8G 83 Linux
Boot Partition
My system uses a traditional BIOS-based boot I did not have EFI to worry about. I mounted partition 2 to /boot and installed grub.
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$ umount /boot
$ mount /dev/sda2 /boot
$ grub-install
$ update-grub
Next I added this line to my /etc/fstab file so that the new boot directory would mount on startup.
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/dev/sda2 /boot ext4 defaults 0 1
I also commented out the old /boot volume. I restarted the server and changed the BIOS settings to boot from the SSD.
Moving data
Now my server was booting from the SSD, but all the data was still in the wrong place. To fix this, I had to move the Ubuntu Logical Volume Group (LVG) to the new disk. My LVG was actually larger than the entire SSD because I was running a Plex server. I had many movies on the disk that were too big for the SSD.
First, I plugged in my new HDDs and set up the RAID (I’ll cover that in another blog). I copied all the files from the LVG onto the RAID and updated Plex to use the new location. Then I removed by media Logical Volume from the group.
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$ unmount /mnt/media0
$ lvremove /dev/ubuntu-vg/media
Also make sure you move the volume from your /etc/fstab file or the system will error when it tries to start.
Now the data in the LVG was nice and small. I started by adding the new SSD to the LVG.
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$ pvcreate /dev/sda3
$ vgextend ubuntu-vg /dev/sda3
This allows the LVG to use both drives. Next I moved the data off of the old disk.
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$ pvmove /dev/sdb3
This took some time but when it was done I removed the old disk from the LVG.
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$ vgreduce ubuntu-vg /dev/sdb3
Now all the data is on the new SSD or the RAID. My disks look like this
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$ lsblk
sda 8:0 0 111.8G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 1M 0 part
├─sda2 8:2 0 2G 0 part /boot
└─sda3 8:3 0 109.8G 0 part
└─ubuntu--vg-ubuntu--lv 253:0 0 100G 0 lvm /
sdb 8:16 0 465.8G 0 disk
├─sdb1 8:17 0 1M 0 part
├─sdb2 8:18 0 2G 0 part
└─sdb3 8:19 0 463.8G 0 part
sdc 8:32 0 3.6T 0 disk
└─md0 9:0 0 3.6T 0 raid1 /mnt/media1
sdd 8:48 0 3.6T 0 disk
└─md0 9:0 0 3.6T 0 raid1 /mnt/media1
Removing the disk
The final step was to shut down the server and remove the old HDD. I had to update the BIOS one more time to turn off the SATA port, and then I could restart into Ubuntu.
Now I have an SSD for all the working files and a RAID for my media.
Summary
Working with hardware is unusual for most developers today but getting an old computer and playing around like this is a massive learning opportunity. Today with the cloud, we rarely have to do things like this, but it’s surprisingly good fun to learn about. I probably could have done it better so let me know what I’ve missed.