Moving a Linux partition

[rustleg]

I have BIU in a UEFI PC. I have moved a Windows partition to another part of my SSD and had to use fixboot.tbs to get it to boot. Now I want to move a working Linux system to some other free space on my SSD. If I simply copy the partition to a different area of free space will it still boot or is there more to do.

[Brian K]

rustleg,

This works for me.

Delete the current Linux partition.
Don't make any changes to the Boot Item.
Restore the Linux backup image to Free Space on any drive. Restart.
Boot the Boot Item.

[TeraByte Support]

It's going to depend on the distro and how grub2 is configured, If you're going to make a copy, you may have to make a copy of the \efi\ items for that OS then edit the grub.cfg as it may refer to the GUID of the partition and/or the GPT entry it's in. You can of course use the linux rescue disk to reinstall grub for a given install (just like a windows / linux install, boot the media after going in to bootit (ctrl-alt-del) for example, then after you do the install, you may have to reactivate but then the new boot item would be added, like an install).

If you do it the way Brian K. mentions, that would may work since after you delete and then restore just the partition, it would restore the GUID, the slot if it's the first available. But it doesn't matter since with the boot menu, it has the option where it ensures the gpt entry is the same, so when using BootIt UEFI, you shouldn't have an issue if the GUID stays the same.

[rustleg]

Thanks. Brian's process worked for me so I didn't have to get involved with the finer details.

[Brian K]

Thanks rustleg. We did cover copying a Linux OS partition without deleting the original partition. In a previous thread.

viewtopic.php?t=4818

[rustleg]

Yes I realised that some time later but by then I had posted, so apologies for forgetting. The problem is that I understood the MBR system but there was still a lot about the UEFI system that is unclear to me. I have just used Chatgpt to understand more which has helped. Maybe I'll ask it more in future until I get comfortable with UEFI.

Anyway many thanks for the invaluable help you have given me.