Recommendations on cloning a bootable main disk

Bruce Labitt bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net
Sun Dec 2 10:47:53 EST 2018


Thanks Dan!  That did the trick.  Doing it the way you suggested worked, 
vs. the way in the video (which did not work).
Your way was simple and with no error.

Thanks everyone for your help.
Hopefully it will boot, and then I'll replace the disk in the laptop 
with this one.

Bruce

On 12/2/18 9:40 AM, Dan Jenkins wrote:
> Booting from sda should be fine. I just wanted to make sure you were 
> not resizing from a live file system, which, while it can work 
> sometimes, is problematic many times.
>
> The 1MiB at the end of the drive appears to be related to GPT. If you 
> aren't using GPT, shouldn't be an issue. With a 1 TB drive, you don't 
> need to use GPT, in any event, though you could choose to. I have also 
> seen such fragments of unallocated space. which appear to have been 
> created due to partition alignment issues. I have never needed to 
> leave such space available. Your partitioning tool may leave such 
> space available, again, due to alignment issues.
>
> On 12/2/2018 9:32 AM, Bruce.Labitt wrote:
>> 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 <http://www.bluemail.me/r?b=14063>
>> On Dec 2, 2018, at 8:42 AM, Dan Jenkins <dan at rastech.com 
>> <mailto: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.
>>>>
>>>>     _______________________________________________
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>
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