New HD clone or rebuild?

General system EndeavourOS installation
1

Hi all,

I’m getting a new HD for my laptop, old one is just too small) that I dual boot with windows. I will obviously have to clone the windows and efi partitions as is (or is that the wrong assumption?), But was thinking of taking the opportunity to rebuild my EOS install, this time with BTFS and considering moving off of grub to either systemd-boot or rEFInd, or with a dualboot is it just best to stick with Grub? or should I just clone the existing install and convert to BTFS?

2

All three of the bootloaders you mentioned have advantages and disadvantages; it will be up to you to decide what you want to try.

  • systemd boot is fast and simple. As it is the new default for EOS, it is possible it would receive more development attention moving forward.
  • Grub allows you to boot off of Btrfs snapshots at boot, which is super useful if you get a breaking update.
  • rEFInd is very easy to deal with. It can handle anything bootable, even other bootloaders. It has a very attractive interface and can be themed, etc.

If you go with something new and don’t like it, you can always change to something else in the future, so no need to feel like you are getting married to your bootloader or anything.

It’s up to you what you want to do, but if you are considering trying something you haven’t used before I say go for it! :smile:

3 Likes
3

so I got a new ssd and decided to take the opportunity rebuilt my laptop and switch to Btrfs and systemd-boot. Ran into issues keeping windows happy, bottom line needed to first clone my old ssd to the new one with clonezilla, resize partitions (PITA) and reinstall EOS with Btrfs and systemd-boot. Bottom line my efi partition now has some legacy crud, but didn’t to remove folds blindly. My efi folder currently looks like:
loader
3144…
EFI → systemd Linux Boot arch antergos_grub Microsoft
$RECYLE.BIN
System Volume Information
BOOT

I’m assuming I can simply remove the $RESCYCLE and System info folders along with the EFI/antergos_grub, is that correct or am I going to bork my system if I delete these folders?

4

Those I would guess have been added by Windows; I do not know if it is fine to remove them or not. In general, I would try not to mess with Windows stuff.

Yes, it is fine to remove any old EFI directories (Linux ones) if you are going to reinstall.