Recommendations on cloning a bootable main disk

[Dan Jenkins]

First, you are running GParted from a bootable flash drive, not from 
booting off the new sdc, correct?

I have had issues, in a few instances, with GParted, when taking 
multiple steps at once.
Rather than do all the steps at once, I would do one step at a time.
Apply it and let it complete.
Then do the next step.
GParted often works fine with multiple steps, except when it doesn't. :-)

Further, you don't actually need to move the swap partition, just 
recreate it in its final position.
That would save time, but doesn't explain the error.

These are the steps I would use, if I was doing it:
1. Delete the swap partition (sdc5)
2. Delete the extended partition (sdc2)
3. Apply steps 1 & 2.
4. Resize the data partition (sdc1), leaving 30 GB unallocated at the end.
5. Apply step 4.
6. Create an extended partition in that 30 GB unallocated space.
7. Create a 30 GB swap partition in that new extended partition.
8. Apply steps 6 & 7.

On 12/1/2018 9:05 PM, Bruce Labitt wrote:
> Thanks for the instructions on the BIOS - umm, nothing was wrong.  
> Having the USB stick prior to entering the BIOS made the device show up.
>
> OK, dd'd the disk.  Took a long time, 94 minutes, but everything is 
> transferred, except for this email.
>
> Next is to resize in gparted - which didn't complete.
> I followed a youtube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDgUwWkvuIY
>
> Just to note,*sdc has never been mounted. *
>
> The video is done in a virtual machine, but I followed the part 
> showing how to do the resizing.  The linux-swap was turned off.  The 
> error is as follows:
>
> GParted 0.30.0 --enable-libparted-dmraid --enable-online-resize
>
> Libparted 3.2
>
> *Grow /dev/sdc2 from 29.99 GiB to 723.03 GiB*  00:00:00    ( ERROR )
> 	
> calibrate /dev/sdc2  00:00:00    ( SUCCESS )
> 	
> /path: /dev/sdc2 (partition)
> start: 437226563
> end: 500118191
> size: 62891629 (29.99 GiB)/
>
> grow partition from 29.99 GiB to 723.03 GiB  00:00:00    ( ERROR )
> 	
> /old start: 437226563
> old end: 500118191
> old size: 62891629 (29.99 GiB)/
>
> /requested start: 437226563
> requested end: 1953523711
> requested size: 1516297149 (723.03 GiB)/
>
> libparted messages    ( INFO )
> 	
> /Unable to satisfy all constraints on the partition./
>
> ========================================
>
> *Move /dev/sdc5 to the right and grow it from 29.99 GiB to 29.99 GiB*
>
> ========================================
>
> *Move /dev/sdc2 to the right and shrink it from 723.03 GiB to 29.99 GiB*
>
> ========================================
>
> *Grow /dev/sdc1 from 208.48 GiB to 901.52 GiB*
>
> ========================================
>
> /dev/sdc1 is ext4 and what I want extended      208.48 GiB
> /dev/sdc2 is the extended partition                      29.99 GiB
> /dev/sdc5 is the linux swap which was turned off 29.99 GiB and was 
> inside the extended partition
> unallocated was                                                  
> 693.04 GiB
>
> Partitions were dragged and moved per the basic instructions.
>
> Can you give me a hint what went wrong?  I'm kind of surprised that it 
> failed, essentially in the first step, growing the extended partition 
> after turning linux-swap off.
>
> The problem might be that gparted still has a problem with leaving 
> 1MiB at the end for the duplicate boot information.  I found a comment 
> in 2017 for gparted: 
> http://gparted-forum.surf4.info/viewtopic.php?id=17646
>
> And: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=738144
>
> Is there a practical work around to my reported error?
>
> Thanks,
> Bruce
>
>
> On 12/1/18 4:39 PM, Dan Jenkins wrote:
>> On some of the BIOSes, unless you have the USB drive connected, before
>> you go into the BIOS, it will not appear as a boot option.
>>
>> Also, depending on the USB flash drive model, it may appear:
>> 1) as a removable device (aka a floppy drive),
>> 2) a hard drive (appearing as second choice under hard disk drives;
>>      you would need to change the 1st drive to USB and the 2nd drive to
>> your current boot drive), or
>> 3) as a CDROM drive.
>>
>> Also, if you have a UEFI BIOS, you may need to switch it to Legacy,
>> instead of UEFI.
>>
>> Lastly, if you have a UEFI BIOS, you need a UEFI compatible boot device.
>> In the case of Clonezilla, you need to download an AMD664 alternative
>> version (Ubuntu-based), rather than the default Debian-based. (We have
>> both the UEFI and Legacy versions of Clonezilla to try when we run into
>> such issues.)
>>
>> And, rarely, I encounter computers that simply cannot boot USB flash
>> drives, but those tend to be much older ones.
>>
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>>
>
>
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