How-To: Move Your Linux Home Folder to a New Machine With rsync

Microsoft just dropped PC-to-PC migration on Windows. On Linux, moving to a new box is still one command. Here’s how I do it through an external drive, no cloud account required.

1. Copy to the drive

Plug in the drive and find where it’s mounted (lsblk). Then:

rsync -aHAX --info=progress2 \
  --exclude='.cache/' --exclude='Downloads/*.iso' \
  ~/ /run/media/$USER/backup/home/

• -a keeps permissions, times and symlinks.
• -H -A -X keep hard links, ACLs and extended attributes.
• The trailing slash on ~/ copies the contents, not the folder itself.

2. Dry run first

Add -n (dry run) to any rsync command to see what it would do before it does it.

3. Restore on the new machine

rsync -aHAX --info=progress2 /run/media/$USER/backup/home/ ~/

4. Run it again

rsync only copies what changed, so a second pass right before you switch over is quick. Don’t add --delete unless you’re sure, because it removes files on the destination.

Tips

• Keep SSH keys and secrets on an encrypted drive, and check their permissions after the copy.
• Reinstall apps from your package manager instead of copying them.

Isolate it: try new software in a disposable VM or spare machine first, with a backup you can roll back to.

God Bless, and Happy hacking!

References & Further Reading

• Rsync (ArchWiki)
• Microsoft removes PC-to-PC migration from Windows 11 (Slashdot)