Migrating my Linux Install From One Machine to the next. Took me longer to open the case.

Before I retired, I always had very new computers.

Then I moved down here to Florida.  The power company who shall remain nameless with their crappy infrastructure took care of that.

I had a rather nice desktop machine.  Then I realized that it was killed by power spikes.  The old laptop I had still worked.

Hmm, I'm onto something here.

Basically that power brick on the floor filtered the power spikes.  Literally, it blew out a power brick and left me powerless until I could get to the computer store down in Miami.

Then I realized that there is not enough room for a desk and a desktop and a giant CRT Style Monitor.  Hey it was the "Naughties" so LCD Screens were still expensive.

I migrated to my laptop permanently.

It was harder to move data around then, the hardware did not lend itself to it, and Windows... Well the less said about that the better.

Now, my newest computer is a little more than 3 years old (November 2020) and it's fast in comparison.  I moved over to Linux permanently and never looked back a while ago.  Some time around 2010, maybe earlier.  When Windows 8.1 came out.   I still have that install on a very old laptop and cringe every time I use it.  Ugly block land, and now Windows 11 is coming back to the way it used to look in Windows 2000 ... with AI?  Sheesh how do you people use Windows these days?  It's a steaming pile of sluggish poop!  Do you want SkyNet because AI is how you get Terminator.

This particular "new" machine I have here is a Lenovo T15 with 16GB of memory and a rather fast 500GB hard drive. 

How I went to it was simple.  I opened it up and connected the new machine and the hard drive clone of a backup from my X390 Yoga.  Turned it on and it worked.

Yep.  That's it.  Really, that old Yoga was feeling it's age because the USB-C socket that I used to power it was getting flaky but it is still a solid performer - Linux is a very forgiving environment.  The prior two upgrades, going back about 10 years, are both usable speed wise, even today.  You can't do that with Windows.

Oh, I had the "new" computer reboot a couple times and looked over the bios on the new machine and everything was just like I left it.

All done until this morning.  I was presented with an "initramfs" prompt.  It was an error that was fixed easily by two file system checks.  Took about 5 minutes once I remembered what I needed to do.

fsck -y /dev/mapper/luks*d
fsck -y /dev/mapper/luks*2

That means: File System Check, answer everything yes, on the drives referenced in the Mapper directory.

Yep.  That's it.  Took about 15 minutes to move the hardware.  Newer machine, larger screen, faster processor, still an encrypted hard drive.  Thanks for the upgrade!  I am right back where I was, doing my thing and happily listening to Mexican Pop on my cheap little external speakers.