Clonezilla Restore Failure on New HD [SOLVED]

[bilyo]

Sorry if this is a repeat question. I couldn't find any previous posts answering this specific problem.
I started with a 250GB hd in my laptop running PCLOS exclusively. I need to dual boot with Win7. So, I installed a new larger HD into my laptop for that purpose. After researching the process I thought I had figured out what to do and it seemed simple enough as I had created a sucessful dual boot on another machine. Trying to avoid a new from scratch install of PCL, I created Clonezilla images of / and /home on the 250gb hd. My intent was to restore them to new partitions after getting Win7 installed on the new hd. Using gparted I created two new primary partitions, using about 1/2 of the hd space, and installed Win7. Windows was working fine. I then created, using GParted, one more primary partition for / and two logical partitions for swap and /home. The / and /home partitions were formated ext4 and swap was formatted Linux Swap. All of the new Linux partitions were larger than the originals on the 250gb hd. My understanding is that Clonezilla can restore to a different size partition as long as it is larger and not smaller. I then tried to restore the images to the appropriate partitions and quickly got a message from Clonzilla that the restore had failed. What did I do wrong or what should I have done?
Thanks

[Phil]

I got caught out with a restore.

The trick is to get into Expert mode, and tell it not to mess with the MBR, not to do anything microsoft wise, and do a bit to bit restore. Particularly important on the first partition, probably not for others,

Once I told clonezilla to replace the image bit-by-bit the recovered partition booted immediately.

This will make sense when you give it another go and do it in Expert mode for more options.

 PS I only use clonezilla to back up my / system on my primary partition sda1 once a month.
For /home and other files I use rsync via a script and cron job to backup to a separate disk.

[bilyo]

Phil,
I assume, if I can get a successful restore, I will then need to use a liveCD to reinstall GRUB?
Do I need to do anything about a partition table or does that get created by Windows and/or PCLOS? If so, when do I do it (Win7 is currently installed and running)? If I understand correctly, doing that wipes out everything. Is there one partition table or does each OS have it's own?
Thanks

[Old-Polack]

Phil,
I assume, if I can get a successful restore, I will then need to use a liveCD to reinstall GRUB?
Do I need to do anything about a partition table or does that get created by Windows and/or PCLOS? If so, when do I do it (Win7 is currently installed and running)? If I understand correctly, doing that wipes out everything. Is there one partition table or does each OS have it's own?
Thanks

Each time you add a partition the partition table changes. The partition table has nothing to do with any given OS, though the tools to create the partitions do. The Linux partitioning tools are superior to the Windows ones.

If you get a successful restore, try this for grub;

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,62786.msg508062.html#msg508062

[bilyo]

Phil,
I don't see anything in the list that is obviously (to me) pertaining to bit by bit. I've tried several different combinations of options, trying to avoid anything that appears to do with windows.  No go.  I'm wondering if it is not possible to do what I am trying to do.  My small source drive has 3 partitions for PCLOS. The two partitions that I want to back up and restore are sda1 and sda3. My new larger target drive has 6 partitions. Sda1 and sda2 (primary) are for windows. Sda3 (primary) is for PCLOS root. Then there is an extended partition (sda4) and 2 logical partitions, sda5 (swap) and sda6 (home). I am trying to restore sda1 from the source drive to sda3 on the target and sda3 on the source to sda6 on the target. Target sda5 will be swap. All partitions on the target are larger that source.

I'm almost hoping you will tell me that this is not possible and then I'll go ahead and reinstall PCLOS from scratch and save myself a lot of angst  .  Otherwise, this has become a challenge and I'm hoping you can step me through the process.

Old-Polack, if I can ever get this restore accomplished, I'll use your link. Thanks

Thanks for the help.

PS,  Is Clonzilla the correct tool for this task?

[Old-Polack]

Phil,
I don't see anything in the list that is obviously (to me) pertaining to bit by bit. I've tried several different combinations of options, trying to avoid anything that appears to do with windows.  No go.  I'm wondering if it is not possible to do what I am trying to do.  My small source drive has 3 partitions for PCLOS. The two partitions that I want to back up and restore are sda1 and sda3. My new larger target drive has 6 partitions. Sda1 and sda2 (primary) are for windows. Sda3 (primary) is for PCLOS root. Then there is an extended partition (sda4) and 2 logical partitions, sda5 (swap) and sda6 (home). I am trying to restore sda1 from the source drive to sda3 on the target and sda3 on the source to sda6 on the target. Target sda5 will be swap. All partitions on the target are larger that source.

I'm almost hoping you will tell me that this is not possible and then I'll go ahead and reinstall PCLOS from scratch and save myself a lot of angst  .  Otherwise, this has become a challenge and I'm hoping you can step me through the process.

Old-Polack, if I can ever get this restore accomplished, I'll use your link. Thanks

Thanks for the help.

PS,  Is Clonzilla the correct tool for this task?

Is your laptop one that can have a second hard drive? If not, do you have a USB external case that you can put one of the drives into? If not, do you have a desktop box that you can use adapters to hook up the two laptop drives?

[bilyo]

Is your laptop one that can have a second hard drive? If not, do you have a USB external case that you can put one of the drives into? If not, do you have a desktop box that you can use adapters to hook up the two laptop drives?

My laptop only holds one drive.  I do have a 1.5TB backup harddrive that connects via USB. I'm not familiar with the items.

[Old-Polack]

Is your laptop one that can have a second hard drive? If not, do you have a USB external case that you can put one of the drives into? If not, do you have a desktop box that you can use adapters to hook up the two laptop drives?

My laptop only holds one drive.  I do have a 1.5TB backup harddrive that connects via USB. I'm not familiar with the items.

Is the old drive still intact; all the working OS present? Is the external hard drive partitioned, or just one big partition? What filesystem is used on the external drive? How full is it currently?

[bilyo]

Is the old drive still intact; all the working OS present? Is the external hard drive partitioned, or just one big partition? What filesystem is used on the external drive? How full is it currently?

Yes. Old drive is intact and PCLOS is fully functional.  1.5TB external hd is divided about in half. One partition is htsf and the other is ext4.  Currently, there is about 293 GB available on the ext4 part.  I can delete some old backups and regain 200+ GB more.

[Phil]

Hi bilyo,

Listen to the wise O-P, he knows best. Provide him with the info and he will resolve.

As only an aside when I recover my clonezilla system image which include the troublesome mbr I use expert mode, unmark anything to do with changing the mbr and microsoft options, and also select on a few screens in:

"Use dd to create partition table"

dd is the unix disk dump utility and does a bit by bit copy. Note my system partition is being recovered to the same partition it originated from, not a new disk.

As mentioned follow  O-P's advice and you will soon be there.

[Old-Polack]

Is the old drive still intact; all the working OS present? Is the external hard drive partitioned, or just one big partition? What filesystem is used on the external drive? How full is it currently?

Yes. Old drive is intact and PCLOS is fully functional.  1.5TB external hd is divided about in half. One partition is htsf and the other is ext4.  Currently, there is about 293 GB available on the ext4 part.  I can delete some old backups and regain 200+ GB more.

What I would propose is an entirely different approach, transferring the contents of the two Linux partitions to two separate directories on the ext4 partition of the external drive. To do this, you would need to reinstall the old drive into the laptop, then do the copying using the rsync -av command as root, from a liveCD. When done, you would then remove the old drive, install the new one again, and reverse the process, copying the data from the two directories to the partitions on the new drive, again using the rsync -av command, as root, from a liveCD.

I use this method to move/copy operating systems on a regular basis. The OS I am typing this from, has been moved three times since it's original installation, so has resided on four different partitions on two separate hard drives. Currently there are two working copies of the same OS on two drives, and I can boot into either.

If your main concern is getting the job done, rather than the method used, I can walk you through the entire process, step by step. Seriously, I've done this literally hundreds of times, and never had a failure, to date. This is also the method by which we upgrade the main PCLinuxOS repo.

[bilyo]

Yes. Let's get the job done with rsync.
I am curious, however, if Clonezilla is capable of doing this.
I appreciate your help.

[Old-Polack]

Yes. Let's get the job done with rsync.
I am curious, however, if Clonezilla is capable of doing this.
I appreciate your help.

Start by replacing the original drive in the laptop, and verify it boots properly when done. When done with that, plug in the external drive, then boot to the liveCD. In a terminal, su to root, then enter the following.

[root@localhost ~]# umount -a                            <Enter>

This is to make sure only the liveCD / partition remains mounted. check to be sure with the following;

[root@localhost ~]# mount                           <Enter>

Next we create two mount directories.

[root@localhost ~]# mkdir -p /mnt/here /mnt/there                           <Enter>

Next we need to see what partitions actually exist, and how they are seen by the running system.

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l                               <Enter>

At which point I need to see the results, for the next commands.

Post your results.

[bilyo]

umount -a returns "device busy".

[Old-Polack]

umount -a returns "device busy".

That's not the full message. It's also the message you are supposed to get, concerning the / partition of the liveCD.