Installation onto x86 HTPC from USB

anonmaster · December 19, 2017 at 6:45 PM

I have an HTPC (x86 64-bit platform) that was previously running Windows 7. My physical hard drive has 2 logical partitions, one that's 25 GB where Windows was installed, and the remainder for data (media files). I created a USB using the LibreELEC USB creator w/ LibreELEC 8.2.1 on it and rather than install it I chose to run it, so it has been running from USB. I configured Kodi and would like to retain that configuration. How do I go about installing from USB while retaining all the configuration I have on the USB drive, and will I lose both logical partitions on my hard drive or will the installer allow me to only select the partition where I had Windows installed so I don't lose all my media files that are on the second logical partition?

Thanks

**lrusak** · December 19, 2017 at 6:56 PM Official Post

The installer will only use an entire hard disk. Only install to a disk that can be wiped.

LibreELEC has a backup and restore utility in the LibreELEC settings add-on that you can leverage.

anonmaster · December 19, 2017 at 7:07 PM

Thanks for pointing out the backup and restore. Will definitely use that.

I'd really like to preserve the partition that has media files on it. I'll create two ext4 partitions for system and storage for LibreELEC. How do I then install to system? Just copy the files over then edit boot sequence? I'll keep researching...

bubblegum57 · December 19, 2017 at 7:56 PM

When you first boot with the installation usb, it will ask you which disk to install it too, it says it will wipe the complete disk, BUT, if the target disk has separate partitions, you MIGHT be able to choose the installation partition.

Note, the drive & partition numbering is "linux" sda1 sda2 sdb1 usb's are something else.

IF you can't see the partitons, then abort the installation.

Clonezilla might be another option, you can create a clonezilla usb, run it from a pc, or htpc , to clone your libreelec (the one with all the settings) to your target. Note, target partition must be the same size or larger than the source. Use gparted for that.

YUMI - Multiboot USB Creator | USB Pen Drive Linux

**chewitt** · December 20, 2017 at 6:27 AM Official Post

THE LIBREELEC INSTALLER DOES NOT INSTALL TO PARTITIONS, IT WILL ERASE THE ENTIRE SELECTED DRIVE

If you don't believe me, feel free to erase your own setup while testing before giving out advice.

anonmaster · December 20, 2017 at 6:34 PM

Thanks for all the help. Ended up installing it onto an old 2GB SD card for now that has decent performance and LE performs better/smoother than my previous Win7/MP setup so I'm happy. I noticed using 'mount' over SSH that the /flash (system) partition is mounted RO and /storage partition is mounted RW. I'm assuming LE does a lot of random writes to /storage, so (guessing here) that running off internal HD will perform better than running off this ol' SD card. Wonder if there's a way to keep /flash on SD and move /storage to HD...

I will look into Clonezilla as well... but right now I've conceded to the fact that I'll have to move all my media to another drive temporarily, install LE and let it wipe the drive, then use gparted to recreate the media partition and move my media back to the original drive/new partition.

**Klojum** · December 20, 2017 at 9:54 PM Official Post

I've had problems with Clonezilla that kept getting errors while trying to clone the storage partition(s) on my PC. That said, I do have a somewhat subnormal multi-boot setup: Ubuntu 16.04 / Windows 10 / LibreELEC 8.x / LibreELEC 9.x ..