Making a disk image of your computer means that it is an exact copy. So first you need to surf through your system and remove things you don't want present on the new machine. One important thing to remove (on a Linux system) is the file 70-persistent-net.rules. This file will copy the important device specific information like the IP address to the new machine. Open a terminal prompt and cd into /etc/udev/rules.d and then do an ls. You should see the file 70-persistent-net.rules. Become root or use sudo and use the rm -rf command to remove this file:
# cd /etc/udev/rules.d
# rm -rf 70-persistent-net.rules
The easiest way to make a disk image is to use Clonezilla Live. It is a GUI based imaging utility, and it is free. You can make a bootable usb stick with clonezilla with a utility on an extra USB stick. Power down your machine (if using a mounted HD be sure to have the storage device mounted before reboot). A USB drive can be plugged in after boot up, as part of the Clonezilla steps which we will get to soon.
1. Plug in the USB stick with Clonezilla Live and reboot into the bios. Change the boot order to boot off of the USB stick. Exit and save.
Some things to note:
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For keymap layout, select Don't touch keymap.
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Select Start_Clonezilla Start Clonezilla and avoid the command line prompt until you feel really good about the process, it is safer that way.
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Select device-image work with disks or partitions using images
2. The Clonezilla screen will come up and prompt you to select where the image is going to being stored. Choose local_dev to save it to a mounted hard drive or USB drive. Clonezilla will prompt you to plug in the USB and wait a few seconds before pressing enter if you are choosing to store your disk image on a USB.
3. Now you choose the destination, which should be an sdb location, like sdb1. Be sure you check the drives so you don't accidentally save the image of the wrong drive. Clonezilla verifies that you are putting the image to the / top directory.
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Clonezilla Live will offer a beginner mode. It is still just as fast, and is fool proof, so to be safe just use that one.
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Choose savedisk, this saves the disk as an image
4. Now you will select the source which should be sda. This is the disk you are copying. You can skip the checking/repairing.
5. Clonezilla will ask if you would like to check the image and see that it is restorable. This is a good idea, just to be on the safe side.
6. Finally, Clonezilla gives you one more chance in case you aren't ready to commit before it saves the new image. Once it is completed, Clonezilla will return a success message, and you are done.
