CHanges in new Isos and moving install to another partition

[gotjazz]

Hey everyone.

Seeing as I'm one of the people who have yet to get the new 32 iso started, I installed the 64 bit version because the lmde install I've been using as my main OS is on an old HD reserved for distrohopping.
For some reason though (and I disabled just as many services and autostart programs as with my old install) the new installation seems to use around 80MB more RAM than the old one. THat brings me to my first question

1. Do 64 bit OSs use more memory in general or has something been added to the new isos that I just cant't find and that isn't pulled in by updateing a running system (and I use apt-get dist-upgrade not mintupdate)


Anyway I prefer the way my old system is running now and so I'm thinking about moving it to my main partition and finally giving it a separate home partition (the one already in use for some time that i used for data storage only in lmde because it had a home folder in the root partition) So

2. Is the following save/sensible?

I boot from a live CD, mount all partitions I need, format the desired root partition and use rsync to copy the system to it. Then I delete all hidden stuff from the desired but outdated home partition (settings etc) and copy the home dir I was using on LMDE into it.
In the end I edit the fstab to point at the new / and /home partitions (although home was a dir earlier so I empty it on the / partition)
After that I boot into the old lmde install which is still there at that point, update grub so I can boot into the new one painlessly where I reinstall grub.
Moving done - right?

[vincent]

1. 64-bit OSes generally use 25-30% more RAM than the exact same 32-bit counterpart.

2. Sounds like a solid plan. Just keep in mind that you can't format partitions when they're mounted (well, I suppose you could, but it'd be a dangerous idea); GParted will force you to unmount your partitions before you can format them.