Upgrading to 64bit

[alanrlow]

I have been running Ubuntu on an old Acer Aspire laptop for several years without a glitch and recentle upgraded to a newer core two duo laptop.
I cloned the HD from the old to the new laptop without a problem, despite being told it wouldn't work, (he only knew windoze)
The thing is now that I have a 64bit processor I would like to upgrade to the 64bit version of Ubuntu, (without losing my data)
My system is, Acer TravelMate 6410 with 160gb SATA HD setup as:

SDA1 20gb ROOT
SDA3 45gb extended partition
SDA5 45gb home partition in the extended partition
SDA4 5gb swap
SDA2 80gb partition for other stuff.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Alan.

[oz]

My personal recommendation would be to backup your data to another partition or an external drive of some kind, do a fresh install with 64-bit Ubuntu, then restore the data to the new system. Of course there is always a chance of the data being lost but having it backed up elsewhere would reduce that chance.

[elija]

My personal recommendation would be to backup your data to another partition or an external drive of some kind, do a fresh install with 64-bit Ubuntu, then restore the data to the new system. Of course there is always a chance of the data being lost but having it backed up elsewhere would reduce that chance.

What he said ++

[peteh]

Choose customised partition set up and don't format your home partition (sda5) and all should be well.
Keep a copy of your data, of course, as already advised but with luck you won't need to call on it.

[devils casper]

I agree with peteh suggestion. If you don't format /home partition, nothing will go wrong. I upgraded Ubuntu 32bit to 64bit a few months back and it worked fine.

[alanrlow]

I agree with peteh suggestion. If you don't format /home partition, nothing will go wrong. I upgraded Ubuntu 32bit to 64bit a few months back and it worked fine.

You sound confident so that's what I'll do. I will backup my home partition first tho. If everything goes belly up would I be able to restore my backed up home partition by overwriting the new installations home partition with the old data?
Thanks.

[alanrlow]

My personal recommendation would be to backup your data to another partition or an external drive of some kind, do a fresh install with 64-bit Ubuntu, then restore the data to the new system. Of course there is always a chance of the data being lost but having it backed up elsewhere would reduce that chance.

Are you recommending I reinstall everything overwriting my old 32bit installation and then replace the home partition with my backed up copy? How will I know if I'm installing all the applications I had previously installed?

[oz]

The fresh install is the best way to achieve 64-bit Linux with the least amount of trouble.

As for the data, I keep all my data on a different partition from the system itself, and I keep a spare copy of all that data on an external drive in another location so even if the main drive were to go down for the count, I still have at least one backup for the data. I also keep copies of my system partition images on the other partition and on the external drive so that it's always easy to get back to where I was in matter of minutes if needed.

If you aren't doing something like this and are concerned about loosing data, now might be a good time for you consider such a plan for your own needs, and it fits in well with any plans for a fresh install.