How to clone SSD with Linux Mint 18 to a larger SSD

Question

Is there a way to clone an SSD with Linux Mint 18 system to a larger SSD and have a functioning system? Also, what to do with GRUB?

I have multiple machines. And I plan on using one unused Linux Mint 18 desktop to plug into both SSDs, somehow copy the filesystems to the new drive.

Answer 1

I searched hard for the most effective way of achieving this goal.

My research suggests, that using dd is a rather deprecated method.

In my case, as said, the target SSD drive is bigger than the source SSD. And for cloning pv utility can be used achieving maximum speed available.

Open terminal and become root (su); if you have sudo enabled, you may also do for example sudo -i; see man sudo for all options):

$ sudo -i

Supposing the original drive is sdX and the target sdY, create an exact copy with:

# pv < /dev/sdX > /dev/sdY

Not only it is shorter and simplier, it is faster by default with no additional settings needed, I achieved an average speed of 400MB/s with ordinary SATA SSD drives.

And as an additional benefit, it shows progress.

If you want to run this with sudo, you have to elaborate a little:

$ sudo sh -c 'pv < /dev/sdX > /dev/sdY'

PS: It is not true as in the other answer that man needs to install GRUB after this. All data is copied, even the boot loader.

Answer 2

If you use dd, the UUIDs of filesystems will remain the same. If you create new fs, you only have to modify /etc/fstab. I prefer to create new (bigger) fs, copy all files with rsync, then modify fstab.

Don't forget: you still have to install grub to MBR/GPT yourself after dd or copy!

Answer 3

Sunday 15th apr 2018

I success to clone a 128GB SSD (incl LVM) to a bigger one 256GB SSD samsung evo and install Windows 10 on a new primary partition. I want to share it with you.

tools: "live cd", gparted and a lot of patience :-). Thnaks to Kaboyish for his link about chroot/grub-update. kali & ubuntu release were from 2017.

Happy reading...

Old 128GB SSD - >256GB ssd Samsung evo

sda has kali (using sda6) , Ubuntu (using LVM on sda5). Boot menu is kali

sdb is my new 256GB My goal: clone kali, Ubuntu to my new 256GB Samsung ssd and having a 110GB partition for windows 10. Boot menu is still kali

1) cloning

fdisk –l /dev/sda

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type

/dev/sda1  *         2048    999423    997376   487M 83 Linux       ; boot grub
/dev/sda2         1001470 250068991 249067522 118,8G  5 Extended
/dev/sda5         1001472 159623167 158621696  75,7G 8e Linux LVM        ; Ubuntu LVM
/dev/sda6       159625216 238493695  78868480  37,6G 83 Linux       ; kali
/dev/sda7       238495744 250068991  11573248   5,5G 82 Linux swap / Solaris     ; swap for kali

Disk /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root: 60 GiB, 64424509440 bytes, 125829120 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Disk /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-swap_1: 15,6 GiB, 16785604608 bytes, 32784384 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Boot your laptop from for example “mint boot DVD”. The new ssd is connect using ssd adapter to usb.

mint ~ # time dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=8192 conv=notrunc,noerror

NB: from another session using “kill –USR1 ” to get progress/statistics for every 10s
watch -n10 sudo kill -USR1 $(pgrep ^dd)
990054+0 records in
990054+0 records out
8110522368 bytes (8.1 GB) copied, 183.261 s, 44.3 MB/s
2227622+0 records in
2227622+0 records out 18248679424 bytes (18 GB) copied, 412.6 s, 44.2 MB/s
6271782+0 records in
6271782+0 records out
51378438144 bytes (51 GB) copied, 1149.82 s, 44.7 MB/s
10460314+0 records in
10460314+0 records out
85690892288 bytes (86 GB) copied, 1920.88 s, 44.6 MB/s
15369910+0 records in
15369910+0 records out
125910302720 bytes (126 GB) copied, 2827.02 s, 44.5 MB/s
15629355+0 records in
15629355+0 records out
128035676160 bytes (128 GB) copied, 2874.86 s, 44.5 MB/s

real 47m54.867s
user 0m1.600s
sys 2m41.036s
mint ~ # date
Thu Apr 12 21:14:34 UTC 2018

Successfull, i replace the internal 128GB with the now cloned Samsung evo 256GB. It boots, I get kali grub menu as before, I choose kali, boot ok. Reboot I choose Ubuntu, boot also OK.

2) Reorganized the partition I boot from usb “gparted live cd”, remove kali swap (kali was smart it uses Ubuntu lvm swap partition when I start it) and making a new primary partition for windows ntfs, ready for win10.

$ lsblk 
NAME                  MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sr0                    11:0    1  1024M  0 rom  
sda                     8:0    0 232,9G  0 disk 
├─sda4                  8:4    0   785M  0 part 
├─sda2                  8:2    0     1K  0 part 
├─sda5                  8:5    0  75,7G  0 part 
│ ├─ubuntu--vg-swap_1 253:1    0  15,6G  0 lvm  [SWAP]          UBUNTU
│ └─ubuntu--vg-root   253:0    0    60G  0 lvm  /               UBUNTU
├─sda3                  8:3    0 112,9G  0 part                 112Gb win10
├─sda1                  8:1    0   487M  0 part /boot
└─sda6                  8:6    0  43,1G  0 part                 KALI
$       

3) Install win10 on sda3

I then install win10 on sda3, unfornutely it remove grub boot on sda, now I can only boot to win10. I need to have kali boot menu back as before.

4) Restore the kali grub menu (the menu will control all the boot partitions on sda)

Using chroot trick from to fix the grub issue https://forums.kali.org/showthread.php?20559-How-To-Repair-Kali-Linux-Grub-With-Kali-Linux-Live-Cd-Dual-Boot-With-Windows-7

I boot from “kali” LIVE DVD.

mount /dev/sda6 /mnt ; my kali partition
mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/dev/pts
mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
chroot /mnt ; if this fail check if the boot DVD is 32 or 64bit as your kali installation
grub-install /dev/sda
Installing for i386-pc platform.
Installation finished. No error reported.
update-grub ;it search for all the boot partition on the new disk sda

exit; it will quit chroot
umount /mnt/dev/pts
umount /mnt/dev
umount /mnt/proc
umount /mnt/sys
umount /mnt

stdout: just ignore the warning about lvmetad (LVM), it boots well to all 3 OS!! Something with LVM, don’t need to do anything about this.

root@kali:/# update-grub
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found background image: /usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-grub.png
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.9.0-kali4-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.9.0-kali4-amd64
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.9.0-kali3-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.9.0-kali3-amd64
WARNING: Failed to connect to lvmetad. Falling back to device scanning.
WARNING: Failed to connect to lvmetad. Falling back to device scanning.
WARNING: Failed to connect to lvmetad. Falling back to device scanning.
Found Windows 10 on /dev/sda3
WARNING: Failed to connect to lvmetad. Falling back to device scanning.
WARNING: Failed to connect to lvmetad. Falling back to device scanning.
Found Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS (16.04) on /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root
done
root@kali:/#

DONE, now i have 3 OS on the new 256GB samsung.

Nb:
change run level in kali/debian , not work!

root@kali:/etc# ls -l /etc/systemd/system/default.target
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 37 Jun 22 2017 /etc/systemd/system/default.target -> /lib/systemd/system/multi-user.target
root@kali:/etc# ls -l /lib/systemd/system/default.target
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Jun 19 2017 /lib/systemd/system/default.target -> graphical.target

root@kali:/etc# systemctl set-default graphical.target
Removed /etc/systemd/system/default.target.
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/default.target → /lib/systemd/system/graphical.target.

root@kali:/etc# ls -l /etc/systemd/system/default.target
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 36 Apr 15 16:47 /etc/systemd/system/default.target -> /lib/systemd/system/graphical.target

Change grub boot order: set boot-default to 3 ; work OK
root@kali:~# cd /etc/default/
root@kali:/etc/default# vi grub
root@kali:/etc/default# update-grub
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found background image: /usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-grub.png
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.9.0-kali4-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.9.0-kali4-amd64
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.9.0-kali3-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.9.0-kali3-amd64
Found Windows 10 on /dev/sda3
Found Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS (16.04) on /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root
done
root@kali:/etc/default# root@kali:~# cd /etc/default/

Boot screen

GOOD LUCK
Tuan CPH