I’ve been meaning to switch to Linux, it at least dual boot for a couple years now but have a dumb roadblock that has gotten in the way.

I rebuilt my desktop a few years ago, adding a fast new SSD as well as pretty much all new guts (mb, processor, graphics) carrying over an ancient HDD that was home to my win 10 installation and a tiny 60gb ssd.

When I rebuilt, I figured I would migrate Windows from the old HDD to the shiny new SSD, but was never successful in doing that.

My next step was to install another copy of win10 onto the new SSD, thinking I could just drag and drop my various program folders from the old install into the new. Dumb, I know.

Long story short, I’m still booting off of the old HDD and have two copys of Windows that I have to choose from when booting (the one on the new SSD is empty and doesn’t see any of my old programs).

I’ve been avoiding it, but do I have to do a complete wipe at this point were I to attempt a dual Windows/Linux boot? I’d really rather not have to reinstall all of my junk on a fresh build.

I’ve run Linux before, so I’m not a complete noob, but it’s been a few years. I’d switch over completely if I wasn’t dependent on the Adobe CS (another problem I plan to fix in time, I know there are alternatives).

Sorry if this isn’t the right place to post this, but I was hoping a veteran in this community that may have solved a similar situation.

  • HelloRoot@lemy.lolEnglish
    6·
    28 minutes ago

    When doing IT support for my parents windows PC I used the following two options in the past:

    • software that can copy the programs to a new install (but it was flakey and couldn’t copy every app)

    • just cloning the whole drive with clonezilla. As long as the new drive is equal or larger than the old one, this worked perfectly.

    There is a clonezilla live boot iso somewhere, or you can do it with any linux live boot and gparted + dd. Just make sure to have a backup of your important data outside of this PC (just in case you fuck up) learn what the tools and command do before running them and tripple check that you are copying the old install to the new drive, not the other way around.

    Then after the cloning unplug the old HDD for testing. Because a clone will have identical IDs the boot process and some programs might get confused.

    During the linux install, unplug the windows ssd and have only the hdd attached, again for the ID issues and just be extra safe to not fuck anything up.