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Upgrading from a traditional HDD to an NVMe SSD can give your Ubuntu system a serious speed boost — faster boot times, quicker app launches, and an overall snappier experience. But how do you migrate your existing Ubuntu installation without reinstalling everything?

I recently went through this process, and here's a complete guide that worked smoothly — no dd cloning nightmares, just a clean and reliable rsync-based migration.

🧰 What You’ll Need

• A bootable Ubuntu Live USB

• Your existing HDD with Ubuntu installed (e.g., /dev/sdb)

• An empty or newly-partitioned NVMe SSD (e.g., /dev/nvme0n1)

• Some patience (~30–60 minutes depending on data size)

🗂️ Step 1: Partition the NVMe Drive

Use GParted or gdisk to create:

1. EFI System Partition (ESP)

   • Size: 512 MB

   • Format: FAT32

   • Type: EFI System

2. Root Partition

   • Use the rest of the space

   • Format: ext4

   • Type: Linux filesystem

Example layout:

• /dev/nvme0n1p1 → EFI

• /dev/nvme0n1p2 → / (root)

sudo parted /dev/nvme0n1 -- mklabel gpt
sudo parted /dev/nvme0n1 -- mkpart ESP fat32 1MiB 513MiB
sudo parted /dev/nvme0n1 -- set 1 esp on
sudo parted /dev/nvme0n1 -- mkpart primary ext4 513MiB 100%
sudo mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/nvme0n1p1
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p2

📦 Step 2: Mount Partitions

From the live USB:

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/src /mnt/dst /mnt/dst/boot/efi

# Mount source (old system)
sudo mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt/src

# Mount destination (new NVMe)
sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/dst
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/dst/boot/efi
sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/dst/boot/efi

📥 Step 3: Copy the System Using rsync

Run this to copy everything from HDD to NVMe:

sudo rsync -aAXHv --progress \
--exclude={"/dev/*","/proc/*","/sys/*","/tmp/*","/run/*","/mnt/*","/media/*","/lost+found"} \
/mnt/src/ /mnt/dst/

• -aAXH: preserves permissions, symlinks, hardlinks, extended attributes

• --info=progress2: gives detailed copy progress

This step can take a while depending on how much data you have.

🏗️ Step 4: Chroot Into the New System

for dir in dev proc sys; do sudo mount --bind /$dir /mnt/dst/$dir; done
sudo chroot /mnt/dst

⚙️ Step 5: Install GRUB Bootloader

grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=ubuntu --recheck
update-grub

⚠️ If you see a warning like: EFI variables cannot be set on this system That’s okay — it just means you booted in BIOS mode and will need to manually boot into the EFI file later.

🧾 Step 6: Update /etc/fstab with New UUIDs

First, get UUIDs:

blkid

Update /etc/fstab:

UUID=1fb01093-412a-4fce-9b7c-8ba92abe8329 /         ext4  errors=remount-ro 0 1
UUID=E651-3815                            /boot/efi vfat  umask=0077        0 1
/swapfile                                 none      swap  sw                0 0

Replace with your actual UUIDs from the blkid output.

🚪 Step 7: Clean Up and Reboot

exit
for dir in dev proc sys; do sudo umount /mnt/dst/$dir; done
sudo umount /mnt/dst/boot/efi
sudo umount /mnt/dst
sudo reboot

Then enter your BIOS/UEFI settings and select the NVMe EFI boot entry (usually under Boot → EFI → grubx64.efi).