Originally posted by: TonyPearson

Continuing my rant from Monday's post [Time for a New Laptop], I got my new laptop Wednesday afternoon. I was hoping the transition would be quick, but that was not the case. Here were my initial steps prior to connecting my two laptops together for the big file transfer:

Document what my old workstation has

Back in 2007, I wrote a blog post on how to [Separate Programs from Data]. I have since added a Linux partition for dual-boot on my ThinkPad T60.

Partition	Size	Format	Mount	Description
/dev/sda1	26GB	NTFS	C:	Windows XP SP3 operating system and programs
/dev/sda2	12GB	ext3	/(root)	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4
/dev/sda5	1GB	swap	swap	Linux swap
/dev/sda6	80GB	NTFS	D:	My Documents and other data

I also created a spreadsheet of all my tools, utilities and applications. I combined and deduplicated the list from the following sources:

• Control Panel -> Add/Remove programs
• C:\Program Files
• Start -> Programs panels
• Program taskbar at bottom of screen
• D:\Install-Files

The last one was critical. Over the years, I have gotten in the habit of saving those ZIP or EXE files that self-install programs into a separate directory, D:/Install-Files, so that if I had to unintsall an application, due to conflicts or compatability issues, I could re-install it without having to download them again.

So, I have a total of 134 applications, which I have put into the following rough categories:

• AV - editing and manipulating audio, video or graphics
• Files - backup, copy or manipulate disks, files and file systems
• Browser - Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Google Chrome
• Communications - Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime
• Connect - programs to connect to different Web and Wi-Fi services
• Demo - programs I demonstrate to clients at briefings
• Drivers - attach or sync to external devices, cell phones, PDAs
• Games - not much here, the basic solitaire, mindsweeper and pinball
• Help Desk - programs to diagnose, test and gather system information
• Projects - special projects like Second Life or Lego Mindstorms
• Lookup - programs to lookup information, like American Airlines TravelDesk
• Meeting - I have FIVE different webinar conferencing tools
• Office - presentations, spreadsheets and documents
• Platform - Java, Adobe Air and other application runtime environments
• Player - do I really need SIXTEEN different audio/video players?
• Printer - print drivers and printer management software
• Scanners - programs that scan for viruses, malware and adware
• Tools - calculators, configurators, sizing tools, and estimators
• Uploaders - programs to upload photos or files to various Web services

Backup my new workstation

My new ThinkPad T410 has a dual-core i5 64-bit Intel processor, so I burned a 64-bit version of [Clonezilla LiveCD] and booted the new system with that. The new system has the following configuration:

Partition	Size	Format	Mount	Description
/dev/sda1	320GB	NTFS	C:	Windows XP SP3 operating system, programs and data

There were only 14.4GB of data, it took 10 minutes to backup to an external USB disk. I ran it twice: first, using the option to dump the entire disk, and the second to dump the selected partition. The results were roughly the same.

Run Workstation Setup Wizard

The Workstation Setup Wizard asks for all the pertinent location information, time zone, userid/password, needed to complete the installation.

Re-Partition Disk Drive

I burned a 64-bit version of [System Rescue CD] and ran [Gparted] to re-partition this disk into the following:

Partition	Size	Format	Mount	Description
/dev/sda1	40GB	NTFS	C:	Windows XP SP3 operating system and programs
/dev/sda2	15GB	ext3	/(root)	Ubuntu Desktop 10.04 LTS
/dev/sda3	15GB	ext3	unused	unused
/dev/sda5	5GB	swap	swap	Linux swap
/dev/sda6	245GB	NTFS	D:	My Documents and other data

Redefine Windows directory structure

I made two small changes to connect C: to D: drive.

• Changed "My Documents" to point to D:\Documents which will move the files over from C: to D: to accomodate its new target location. See [Microsoft procedure] for details.
• Edited C:\notes\notes.ini to point to D:\notes\data to store all the local replicas of my email and databases.

Install Ubuntu Desktop 10.04 LTS

My plan is to run Windows and Linux guests through virtualization. I decided to try out Ubuntu Desktop 10.04 LTS, affectionately known as Lucid Lynx, which can support a variety of different virtualization tools, including KVM, VirtualBox-OSE and Xen. I have two identical 15GB partitions (sda2 and sda3) that I can use to hold two different systems, or one can be a subdirectory of the other. For now, I'll leave sda3 empty.

Take another backup of my new workstation

I took a fresh new backup of paritions (sda1, sda2, sda6) with Clonezilla.

The next step involved a cross-over Ethernet cable, which I don't have. So that will have to wait until Thursday morning.

technorati tags: IBM, Lenovo, ThinkPad, T60, T410, Intel, Clonezilla, SysRescCD, Gparted, Windows, Ubuntu, Linux, Lucid, LTS