How to clone your hard drive using free and simple open-source tools (w/any OS on your cloned drive!)

By Gabriel Staples
Written: 28 Jan. 2018
Last Updated: 28 Jan. 2018

Last Article:

• 10-Second $10 Upgrade to Triple Your Raspberry Pi 3 Network Speed

This Article:
I just upgrade my hard drive to an SSD (Solid State Drive). Now my computer runs soooo much faster! It's usable again! No matter what operating system you have, the following instructions will work, since we will simply be using free and open source, and also no-cost, tools to copy your drive data, byte by byte, from one drive to another. In other words, the copy technique doesn't even read files, as it doesn't know what files are, so it doesn't care what file structure or format you have. It just reads bytes. I'm pretty excited that such great free tools exist. No need to buy Acronis, just do this.

How to clone your hard drive:

1. Buy an external hard drive USB enclosure. Ex: Sabrent Ultra Slim USB 3.0 to 2.5-Inch SATA External Aluminum Hard Drive Enclosure [Black] (EC-UK30) ($8.99).

2. Buy a nice new SSD. Ex: Samsung 860 EVO 1TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD. Place the 860 EVO into the enclosure and plug it in.

3. Make a bootable USB flash drive containing Linux Ubuntu 16.04, or whatever the latest LTS (Long-Term Support) version is at the time.

10-Second $10 Upgrade to Triple Your Raspberry Pi 3 Network Speed

By Gabriel Staples
Written: 20 Jan. 2018
Last Updated: 20 Jan. 2018

Site Map/Table of Contents

tldr;

Buy one of these USB to Gigabit Ethernet adapters for $10, plug it in to your Raspberry Pi 3 and voilá! Your new Pi 3 Ethernet connection is now 3x faster than the built-in Ethernet port and 12x faster than the built-in WiFi adapter (source: see my test results below)!

This really matters when you're using your Pi 3 as a network device, server, router, hotspot, NAS, or remote development machine. Pretty much it really matters whenever you want it to work better on your local or wide area network, which includes ssh-ing or otherwise remoting into it.

Details:

How to make a Linux Live USB with a 2nd, Windows-readable partition for storage

This article is a "Notes to Self" article. That means I wrote it for my own personal reference and use, with myself as the target audience during drafting, but decided to post it here because I believe it is useful to others too, and I want to reach as many people as possible, not just me. 

Ever wanted to have a bootable Linux USB flash drive with a separate, Windows-readable partition for general file storage? Here's how.

By Gabriel Staples

Written: 26-27 May 2016

Posted online: 26 Aug 2017
Updated: 26 Aug 2017

The Gist of it/The super short version:

-for the experienced Linux user

1. Use gparted on a Linux computer to make 2 FAT32 partitions on the thumb drive. The partition created first must be for storage, while the 2^nd one must be for the Linux distro you are putting on the Live USB.
2. Use UNetbootin on a Linux computer to install your iso file for the Live USB onto the 2^nd partition you just made above.
3. Done. You can now boot from the USB thumb drive, from its 2^nd partition, while its 1^st partition only is readable and usable by Windows still (as well as by Linux or Mac too of course).