Trying to clone drive put it in another computer

[Richard B]

Hi Glin22. You may have moved on from this, but if not the following may help. It is terminal (command line) based in the main.


You need to manage the copy from a system which is not itself a clone of the one you want to copy. Running from a live DVD or USB stick should be fine. The source drive must be passive and, as I understand things, UUIDs apply to partitions, not drives. Having two partitions on a system with identical UUIDs may cause big problems if mounting is attempted.

For backups and duplicating I use gddrescue as it gives progress information, rather than the traditional "dd", but gddrescue needs installing

Code:

sudo apt-get install gddrescue

I believe it can be installed into a running live system, given an Internet connection.

The two hard drives must be attached - could be one direct by SATA cable or connector and one via a USB caddy. Find their IDs such as /dev/sdx and /dev/sdy using "Disks" from the settings menu. Assuming /dev/sdx is the source, copy AFTER DOUBLE CHECKING THE DRIVE IDs using something like

Code:

sudo ddrescue /dev/sdx /dev/sdy a-unique-filename

Note that the command drops the "g" from gddrescue. The file will record what happened but you will see any error messages on screen anyway.

Wait a long time! Then shut down and dismantle.

In my experience that should work but other tips are to use the command

Code:

blkid

to see the UUIDs (and other partition details) and to note that if necessary /etc/fstab can be edited on the destination drive to make corrections. Indeed, this might work on your earlier copy.

Regards,
Richard.