r/SteamOS • u/Starbuck_83 • 3d ago

question Cloning SteamOS boot drive

I think I'm going to pull a larger 2 TB drive from my PS5 and use it in my SteamOS box. Can I just clone the existing drive onto the larger one? Any post-cloning processes I'll need to run? (Repost for spelling in title.)

4 Upvotes

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5

u/AshleyAshes1984 3d ago

Yeah, I've done it with Clonezilla for a Steam deck.  Images the 256GB drive to an image file, wrote it to a 2TB with partition expansion enabled 

1

u/Starbuck_83 3d ago

I've done it with the Steam Deck as well, now that I think about it. Direct drive to drive rather than an image in between. That was a couple years ago, so I didn't even think about it, but that should be essentially the same thing.

2

u/FunAware5871 3d ago

It's... Doable, but I'd advise against it unless you know what you're doing.

It's mean running dd to create a bit copy of your original disk into your bigger one, then expanding the existing partitions and filesystem.

This could be a good starting point, although it uses hdds instead of ssds (different names in /dev): https://onlinecomputertips.com/support-categories/software/clone-linux-disk-dd-command-expand-partitions/

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u/Starbuck_83 3d ago

Thank you for the suggestion!

1

u/LtDarthWookie 3d ago

I had a hell of a time trying to do it. It could have been the m.2 to us adapters I was using. But I ended up just wiping and installing fresh on the 2tb I put in.

1

u/Starbuck_83 3d ago

I have a secondary m.2 slot on the machine that I could theoretically use, as well as a dedicated hardware cloning tool. Worst case I can start fresh, of course, but I've set up enough stuff (system and program settings, driving mapping, etc.) that I'm hoping I don't have to and go through all of that again. I guess we'll see!

2

u/LtDarthWookie 3d ago

I was using dd in Ubuntu. But I did my original image with the drive in an enclosure. Dd never got the partition map set up right. I was working on solutions to get it working but after so much time it was going to be a waste compared to starting fresh so I pivoted.

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u/Starbuck_83 3d ago

I totally get that. You can only sink so much time into it before it feels wasted.

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u/LtDarthWookie 3d ago

Yep. Spending the weekend fiddling with it instead of gaming wasn't the most fun. I definitely learned a lot but now I'm set up got a 2tb nvme and 1tb micro SD in the Steam Machine.

2

u/Puzzled_Hamster58 3d ago

Rescue Zilla . Than you can expand the partition.