The key is that you need to know the passphrase to do it, if you don't know the password for the key then you can't remove the key since it cannot be decrypted. ssh-keygen is the easiest method and openssl can be used to manually remove the key and output it to a new file, which you can then copy back over top of the encrypted file. After that your public key authentication will work without any password prompt because it is no longer encrypted. Make sure you understand........

1.) Replicate the number of partitions in your new drives. gdisk /dev/sda gdisk /dev/sdb I created 3 partitions of the same same size. partition #1: +1G (/boot) partition #2: +60G (swap) partition #3: rest of it (/) #note if you are using GPT/gdisk you need to create separate a partition at least 1MB in size (in my case I would a 4th partition and mark it type ef02).........