probably not, I move SSDs between computers all the time and linux always just works
very different story for windows installations though 🤮
nvidia complicates this, as always
I've honestly had a lot of luck booting a Windows SSD on different computers.
I love your comment. So reassuring. Lol. I HAVE moved SSDs before where it was only Linux, in this case I'm worried about it because it's a dualboot
It might but I wouldn’t. Every weird problem in the future is gonna make you wonder if it’s because of that. Now what I would do is get another hard drive, install to it, and copy things over. But basically leave the original one alone. My 2¢
Every weird problem in the future is gonna make you wonder if it’s because of that.
Pretty much what I've realised about doing anything weird with my system. I want a peaceful life.
In general it shouldn't. You might need to install some new drivers for the new chipset but in itself the system should work. Especially since nowadays kernels are shipped with a lot of stuff and I'm guessing you're not compiling yours
Regarding messing up with live environment, I don't remember if GPT is enough for UEFI to load your bootloader or maybe you might need to install something in there
I moved my Fedora SSD from an Intel 8th gen laptop to an AMD Zen4 laptop with 0 issue and 0 config. So.... you're probably fine.
I have before move SSDs and had no issues actually, now that you mentioned it. Lol. But this is a different case because I dualboot and I'm technically moving two OSs to a new mobo.
Linux: no, but not necessarily plug-and-play. My daily-driver install is literally pre-configured on a VM and cloned to all of my machines with various motherboards. Nvidia complications aside, a default Linux install will contain nearly every driver you could ever need to get up and running. However, some motherboards do need you to chroot from a live environment and make it "aware" of the existing GRUB bootloader.
Windows: At best, you'll need to reactivate. More often, it'll be missing a driver or just not work as well as it did on the old motherboard. It's better to reinstall Windows.
Will admit that I'm very biased against reinstalling Linux anew except as a last resort since it's a painstaking days-long process to configure things just right for my picky tastes.
That's pretty awesome that you can actually take a VM and make it an actual OS. I seriously need to learn how to do that. Also, the only thing I was mostly told is that the new motherboard might not know where the boot partition is, so like you said, I may need to chroot and let it know where it is. I have been told that it is just
sudo pacman -S grub
and
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
. And I'm not sure if that is it or if there is something else I may need to run. I have moved an SSD from PC to another before and it was plug-n-play. Like it just booted right away into the system. So not sure. I'll see what happens.
As others have said, no for the Linux partition; it's the same arch, socket type, etc. CachyOS's kernel probably contains everything you need.
For the Windows partition you might have problems though. Iirc Windows connects licences to motherboards, to prevent disk cloning to circumvent buying licences, so Windows may think you've cloned your drive to pirate Windows. I've never tried secure boot but I know W11 requires TPM too so if you've got secure boot you should look into how to switch to a new motherboard on Windows.
If windows crying about a license is my biggest issue then I think I'm ok with that. I am more worried about efi partitions since I dualboot
massgrave.dev has you covered if windows throws a fit
That and a friend of mine has given me a key a long while ago that I haven’t used yet.
iirc they track the hardware changes and do allow motherboard swaps, but it may be safer to swap cpu first, then motherboard
Most distributions, no.
Gentoo, yes.
Gentoo—depends on your CFLAGS, specifically -march. You may have to change it to a more generic setting and rebuild the system set, plus build additional drivers into your kernel if you have a custom one, before you can safely proceed with the move.
In other words, you can get away without reinstalling, but it's a bit more involved because you may need to undo some customization first.
As I recall - from nearly 20 years ago! - kernel compilations were pretty slender, too. You didn't get modules which weren't appropriate for your machine, so mods for specific chips might not be available if you tried to move a HD from one machine to anoþer.
You get whatever drivers you checked off in the config. That might be only what you need for your machine, or you can build some extras, into the kernel or as modules (I've done make modules_install separate from updating the kernel more than once, because I needed support for a new peripheral). In order to boot the machine you only need a minimal set of drivers: CPU, video, keyboard (+ port), and hard drive. Anything else you can fix later if you need to.
My experience in moving a system with a custom kernel from an Athlon64 to a Phenom II more than a decade ago was that the CPU, video, and keyboard were either the same for both or easy to figure out (CPU might have been a bit more difficult if I'd been switching between AMD and Intel, but not much), but I ended up building pretty much every possible hard drive controller driver directly into the kernel until I figured out which one the new board was using. The new system booted without issue, but I had to futz around a bit to get ALSA and other nonessentials back on track.
Reinstall shouldn't be required but you'll likely need to build a new initrd to ensure the boot process has the right drivers.
Ok, that sounds a bit better. I'll need to learn the building of initrd. Off to searching. Thank you.
This is actually not even necessary. The systems are similar enough it'll just work. I have recently swapped an SSD from a laptop to a newer model with CachyOS, and that was more of a generational jump in terms of cpu and other hardware.
But CachyOS has a quirk. Linux systems specify which partitions are mounted to which directories in the /etc/fstab file. Unfortunately, the boot partition is specified using a device name and not a UUID. this is problematic when switching an SSD from a system to another as this may very well change device names. It did for me and I then had to rescue boot + chroot to fix it.
The fix, if done before, is trivial: edit the line for /boot in that file to start with UUID= (followed by the actual UUID of the partition) instead of with /dev/nvme0n1p1 or whatever the current device name is. Google should be able to tell you how to find the UUID of your boot partition.
Highly unlikely. These days, disk space is so cheap that all manner of drivers are provided whether you need them or not. Worst case, you should still be able to boot recovery mode or chroot, as you mentioned.
Just make sure that the disk and boot configuration is the same (uefi, sata, secure boot), else both Windows and Linux may have issues finding their boot files.
Drivers in kernel, so it should generally work. Except if you have hw-specific configs around, but that's something that you did then.
I don't really do crazy low level stuff on my machine. Just gaming and programming.
Honestly, probably no. You're switching to something with the same CPU generation and micro architecture, and the boards are by the same manufacturer with the same mobo chipset generation (both 5xx). It should be plug and play.
The only major change I can see the old CPU has an iGPU, while the new one doesn't, meaning that you won't be able to use the video port built into your motherboard, only the ports on your GPU. I'm guessing you probably weren't using that HDMI port in the first place, so it's probably non-issue.
EDIT: There is a small chance you'll have to change your fstab depending on how it's configured; if it's done by drive UUID, it won't be a problem.
Depending on how grub was installed, you might need to boot a live environment just to tell your new mobo about it. You can skip chrooting if your live media has efibootmgr and you can figure out how to use it, but if that fails you can always chroot and install grub fresh.
Also, it might just work.
Man, if it is as easy as just installing grub, then I’m golden. cachy-chroot will take care of that
Just make sure you put it on the right disk, if you go that route ;)
I’m a paranoid person when it comes to software. Rest assured that it will be the right disk. lol
Great advice in the comments already, I'll just recommend that you familiarise yourself with the rescue boot of a live disc of your distro.
If things go weird with thr move you can boot the live in rescue mode, mount your disks and fix fstab, or even redo the initrd . Don't wait until you need it
Highly doubtful since it's AMD to AMD.
Honestly, even AMD to Intel would probably go mostly fine, considering the monolithic nature of the kernel and it having most drivers built in.
You'd probably want to make sure you have the Intel firmware package installed and make sure to remove configs specific to AMD stuff, like power management configs and kernel parameters, but it would still most likely boot.
I'm not too worried about the architecture more than I am about the boot partitions getting messed up. Will see. I'll actually post about it here when it's all done.
For your linux partition you'd probably just need to install new drivers. I've popped my boot drive into a bunch of different pcs with no issue.
Your windows partition might be weird, last i heard it assigns the activation to the motherboard serial number or something so you might have to redo the crack or provide your activation code again
I'm not worried about the license issue on windows. I actually do have the code saved up because I have always known that it ties it to the mobo.
Usually, you don't need to bother much with drivers at all outside of Nvidia GPUs and Broadcom modems since the kernel is monolithic and contains most drivers.
On an ATX motherboard, I think it's extremely rare for the ethernet chipset to require an out-of-kernel driver.
This is true, i didn't read the part where he's keeping everything except the motherboard/cpu. I'm used to switching out to random gpus LMAO
Some reviewers on Amazon even mentioned that it worked on Linux just fine.
You should always reinstall when switching motherboard. There's so many drivers that could possible make a problem. Unless you switch between 2 totally identical motherboards... Then give that a go...
I’ll do everything in my power to not reinstall. I’ve put so much work into this install and I don’t want to redo it all. These two motherboards are essentially identical. Same company, same socket, same everything. I’m only getting pcie 4.0 on the new one and an extra slot for a second NVME. The new cpu is the same. Going from R7 5700G to R7 5800xt
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