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
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