[arch-general] Re-install of Arch on a larger drive

[Jens John]

On Sat, Mar 17, 2018 at 05:25:36PM -0400, Trey Sizemore via arch-general wrote:
> anything else I could do to make the process fast and as close to the 
> current install as possible?

Yes. Do not reinstall but migrate your file system contents 1:1 to the 
new disk using rsync. The advantage is that the file system contents and 
therefore system configuration stay the same and you don't have to waste 
time putting stuff together afterwards.

I used/recommend a procedure similar to [1]. The principle is basically 
the same as a reinstall but instead of bootstrapping from a bare bones 
system you substitute your existing file systems. I don't see any 
benefit of doing it differently unless your existing install is broken 
in some way.

The most time was taken up by copying 512G of file system contents over 
a SATA<>USB3 bridge to the new SSD. If you can put both the old and the 
new drive on a SATA bus, you'll be done in no time.

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/migrate_installation_to_new_hardware#Top_to_Bottom