Learn why things work on a system

Yesterday I migrated a 10-year-old laptop to a new one. Therefore I installed the new system (10 min via proxy), installed standard software (20 min via script) and transferred the user data 1:1. For this purpose I dismounted the hard disk of the old laptop. Remove a screw at the side slot, open the cover, take out the HDD and copy it via a SATA-USB3 hard disk adapter (25 min depending on the amount of data), log in, be amazed that everything is ready and works.

In order to copy the data exactly as it was, with timestamp and everything, I used the following command:

sudo rsync --numeric-ids -axAhHSP /media/root/oldharddisk/home/user/ /home/user/

Looks quite complicated, but the result is a complete and very accurate system upgrade to a new hardware in about one hour. All you need to do is ask for advice on how to do this, and learn a little something about rsync.

Afterwards, the system was ready to use immediately, everything was just like the old system. The browser had all bookmarks and its history, the email program had all emails, the office package had all settings etc.

If instead I had clicked around with the mouse and migrated the system, all files would have new timestamps, i.e. the music collection would be all from today, etc. Or even copied over an external hard disk (FAT32, NTFS), a lot of things would have gone wrong during the copying process. I bet that would have taken the whole afternoon. Therefore I was able to show some new stuff in the afternoon and was done in no time.

The point is, please learn how the systems work. Please ask how it works and continue your education. Save time, achieve a tidy result and you have learned something.

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