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Moving to a smaller droplet

Posted on July 1, 2014

I am planning to move to a smaller droplet, since the current setup is overcapable. Now, I know, DO doesn’t support resizing to a smaller disk - I guess I will just have to move the installation manually. What is the best way to do so? Are there tools that allow you to transfer a complete Linux installation to another machine? Or will I have to reinstall all my applications on the target droplet?

My current droplet is the $10/mo Debian 7 x86 droplet, I want to move to the $5/mo droplet.

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Doug C

July 1, 2014

Not sure if downsizing but you could try https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-resize-droplets-using-snapshots.

Basically create a snapshot of current droplet. Then recreate it as smaller size using the snapshot as image.

If it doesn’t work you could just restore the snapshot you just created! Only risk is a little downtown.

bensnik

July 1, 2014

I have already tried that and it gives me the error that you cannot instantiate a droplet from a snapshot of a bigger droplet. This is obvious, for a 30 GB HDD droplet could have more than 20 GB hard drive used, meaning it is physically impossible to migrate the droplet directly. In my case, I have less than 5 GB hard drive used however, so that should not pose a problem in that regard.

bensnik

July 2, 2014

To follow up on this, I just manually reinstalled everything, since I was able to clear up some clutter this way.

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This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.

You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!

These answers are provided by our Community. If you find them useful, show some love by clicking the heart. If you run into issues leave a comment, or add your own answer to help others.

Doug C

July 1, 2014

Not sure if downsizing but you could try https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-resize-droplets-using-snapshots.

Basically create a snapshot of current droplet. Then recreate it as smaller size using the snapshot as image.

If it doesn’t work you could just restore the snapshot you just created! Only risk is a little downtown.

To follow up on this, I just manually reinstalled everything, since I was able to clear up some clutter this way.

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