Recommendations on cloning a bootable main disk
Bruce Labitt
bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net
Sun Dec 2 11:43:04 EST 2018
So after changing the boot order to boot from the new drive first, BIOS
had to fall back to booting from the smaller (original) drive. I had no
warning or display, BIOS switched over "silently".
What is the best way of diagnosing this and proceeding? I presume
something needs to be done to grub on the new disk.
Since I had done a dd copy, wouldn't grub already be there?
On 12/2/18 10:47 AM, Bruce Labitt wrote:
> 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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>>>>> http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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