Recommendations on cloning a bootable main disk

Sun Dec 2 09:32:22 EST 2018

I'm booting on to sda, not sdc.  sda is a 240GB SSD.  sdc is not active and hasn't been mounted.  sdc is a 1TB drive.  When sdc is finally sorted out, I will physically remove sda (240) from my laptop and install sdc (1T).  ( The bigger sdc drive probably will turn into sda! ). 

Just to make this explicit, the sdc drive is connected to the laptop via a USB3/SATA adapter.  I haven't opened up the laptop yet.

If you think I should boot from a USB Ubuntu flash drive I can do that as well.

Thanks for the tips on gparted.  
Do I need to allocate 1MiB at the end of the drive?  I'm reading conflicting requirements on this.

I will try your suggestions and will report back.

⁣Sent from Blue 

On Dec 2, 2018, 8:42 AM, at 8:42 AM, Dan Jenkins <dan at rastech.com> wrote:
>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.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> gnhlug-discuss mailing list
>>> gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
>>> http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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