Post History

I'll add a specific, simple way that worked for me:

1. Create some kind of Linux Live USB
2. Boot into Live OS
3. Use `lsblk` and `blkid` to figure out which drive exactly is the old and new one. Stay in the same Live session (don't reboot) in case the drives move around between boots.
4. Double and triple check, because if you mess up here you can lose all your data forever
5. Suppose your old drive is `/dev/sda` and the new drive is `/dev/sdb`. Go into a terminal,  and type `pv /dev/sda > /dev/sdb`.

When it is done, everything on your old drive will be copied exactly to the new drive. In fact, even partition UUIDs will be identical, which ordinarily is not supposed to happen - it's not a **unique** identifier if multiple partitions have it. So for example, if you have an fstab identifying partitions by UUID, this may not work right after you clone a drive in this way. My solution is to have a "follow up" process like this:

1. After clone is done, shutdown the computer. Do not boot into your hard drive.
2. Physically disconnect the old drive (pull out the data cable)
3. Boot up from the new drive, and check that everything works as before, and shut down.
4. Re-connect the old drive, and boot into the Live USB.
5. Delete partitions on the old drive.

This way all your data will be on the new drive exactly as it was on the old, down to the UUIDs.

Of course, the new drive cannot be smaller for this to work. If it is larger, the partitions won't take up the whole drive. After the clone is complete, you can use some other partition tool to resize them so they can use the larger capacity of your drive.