Software :: Cloning Partition To Different Laptop - Invalid Partition Table
Nov 19, 2009
I'm trying to clone a Linux install to a different laptop. It's made a little complicated by two facts:
1) The 'new' laptop I'm trying to copy my Linux installation to is actually older and has a smaller hard drive then the computer I'm copying from
2) The computer I'm copying from has both a windows and Linux installation; I only care about the Linux partition.
I figured I would copy only the Linux partition from my primary computer to the laptop, sense the laptop doesn't have a large enough hard drive to copy everything. So I used the DD commands to copy SDA3 (main Linux partition) from my main computer to SDA2 of my laptop. When I came back a few hours later I was surprise to find my laptop trying to reboot itself (I never turned it off). It would keep starting to reboot, failing, and restarting itself. Not too surprising sense its boot partition wasn't changed so it's trying to boot into centos when I copied a redhat partition to it.
The problem is that when I used a redhat boot disk the rescue mode was unable to find a Linux partition to mount. /dev/sda2 exists, but trying to mount it gets the complaint "No such file or directory". "fdisk -l" lists sda1 (the boot sector) and sda2. Sda2 is the correct size and reports Linux LVM for its system. But "fdisk -l /dev/sda2" gives the error message "Disk /dev/sda2 doesn't contain a valid partition table" Did I not clone the drive correctly, or was an error caused due to the boot sector not being copied yet (the laptops boot sector is smaller then my old computers, so I can't copy from old computer to laptop)? Can I salvage the laptops partition table somehow, or do I have to repeat the cloning process? And if I do have to re-clone my computer can anyone tell me what I did wrong the first time so it works this time? I don't care if I copy just the Linux partition or both windows and Linux. Even though my main computer has a larger hard drive I'm only using about half of its available space so it should be possible to copy both partitions if I could ignore the unused sections of the harddrive.
Edit: I used DD to copy a tiny part of the Linux partition from my laptop so I could look at it. Most of it is illegible binary of course, but I scrolled through till I found some text right near the beginning:
Code:
VolGroup00 {
id="F2MWxh-....-BidcLe"
seqno = 1
[code]....
So it seems that the DD command did copy everything over to the laptop, which is good to know. I noticed that it says device="/dev/sda3" right in the middle of the code I just posted. The Linux section of my original computer was SDA3 but I copied it to partition SDA2 of my laptop. So is the problem because the boot partition is for the wrong device? I don't suppose if I modified that one line to say SDA2 it would be able to load correctly? (Not that I know how I would modify the line, short of using the DD command again).
I was installing opensuse 11.2 in parallel with windows xp.but during installation suddenly power has gone and after that opensuse is giving me the error message corrupt partition.i am also not able to login in xp. so I decide to reinstall windows, I got the error saying "invalid partition table" after the first restart of windows xp installation.
I tried to use windows system recovery console and committing fixmbr and fixboot commands, but didn't work. i have 2 window partition(1 for windows and 1 for data).i do,nt want to format 2,nd partition.
How can I installed windows?My plan was first to install windows xp, then opensuse again.
I was reading another thread about someone with a bad partition table and I decided to join this forum. I'm not going to take any drastic actions with the partition (/dev/sda3) in question. I am going to wait for instructions on what to do first. I am not very good with Linux and need some hand holding. System: DELL 4550 Dual-Booted with XP and Ubuntu. Works OK, just no swap. Well, here's what I did: I deleted a partition for Windows XP Pro because it was a trial, and it ran out. I then decided to slide the swap partition for the Ubuntu Linux that I dual-boot into over. (If this was successful, I was going to try expanding the root partition to take up the unused space.) I used Gparted on a CD to do this, as I figured it was safe to do.
I now cannot mount the swap space at bootup (and have to go into a backup version of the OS), although I can use Gparted in Linux to execute the "swapon" command, and it appears that it worked because I now see "swapoff" as an option on the context menu. (I actually don't even need a swap partition, except to hibernate.) If I highlight the swap partition and click on "Drive" on Gparted's menu bar and select "Create Partition Table", it will erase all data on /dev/sda, so how do I fix the bad partition table non-destructively?
I installed Ubuntu as shown in the wiki and when I went to restart it gave me a lovely blinking cursor and nothing else. So I held down option, loaded into osx, reinstalled rEFIt and got my menu on startup. Unfortunately, the partition sync tool doesn't seam to be working, it gives me an error: Status: MBR partition table is invalid, partitions overlap. Error: Not Found returned from gptsync.efi
I have just installed the newest Debian Stable 7.8 release on my new notebook. Before installation I had to free some disk space from the preinstalled Windows7 with ntfsresize and fdisk. In addition to the existing three primary partitions I created an extended one with three logical partitions for /(root) /home and swap, see the output of 'fdisk -lu'
For some reason I put a bootable flag on sda7, and the only small concern during installation was that some BIOS systems might not work with boot-flag no logical drives. Now, every time I boot I get this "Invalid partition table!' message which I must 'enter" away before I get to the GRUB menu.
I installed openSUSE on a XP runnng computer and every thing is OK.When I tried to Install a new XP, I got this error:Code:Invalid Partition Table I fixed it by reinstalling GRUB using Rescue System.I tried fix mbr on XP Repair System and I got that error again.Now I want to keep XP and remove openSUSE. But computer only boots by GRUB and XP's boot loader is unable to boot and shows that error
Is there a difference between using GPT partition table when formating hard drives and MS-DOS partition table? What are the advantages/disadvantages of using either?
I have tried to automate the configuration of a usb drive with not much success.
The problem that I have is that I have a large amount of usb drives that have a partition table of type "loop" and I need to change them to "msdos". The size of the drives vary and I need to use FAT32 or FAT16 file system.
I've tried various partitioning commands and gui applications but cant find one that I can give a one line command to to set the partition table, maximum partition size and file system.
Everything is installed and setup on my system, but when I setup my partitions I chose my Windows partition to be bootable. Can I just use cfdisk to toggle the bootable flag so my linux partition is bootable and rewrite the partition table?
I want to change my sda2 partition to ntfs type. i have installed GParted but it is returning a strange type of error. Here is the error dump file...
[Code]...
WARNING: the kernel failed to re-read the partition table on /dev/sda (Device or resource busy). As a result, it may not reflect all of your changes until after reboot. WARNING: the kernel failed to re-read the partition table on /dev/sda (Device or resource busy). As a result, it may not reflect all of your changes until after reboot.
Is there a program that will reread the partition table and update the kernel even if one of the unmodified partitions is mounted? I installed my system on one partition, then I added another with free space. Now I want to format the second partition, but the kernel doesn't know about it yet. I tried sfdisk -R /dev/sda, but it refuses while the root partition is mounted. Is there anyway I can avoid rebooting?
USB flash disk partition disappeared as well as partition table I'm not sure about the cause
Code:
root@u# less /var/log/syslog usb 5-1: New USB device found, idVendor=058f, idProduct=1234 usb 5-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[code]....
Where did the partition table go? The device had one ext3 partition something around 4GB(size of USB storage device). I need to restore few files from this device.
What I believe has happened is that I've corrupted the partition table. Essentially one of my partitions' ending point exceeds the maximum number of cylinders/sectors on my drive.
Essentially I have the same problem as on the thread @ [url] but do not know how to fix this and am afraid to reformat/partition based on sectors without really knowing what I'm doing here.
[code]...
When I try to look at SDA in GParted everything shows up as unallocated (though it's obviously not) and it says
In my efforts to resize my BTRFS Partition, I accidentally unmarked my BTRFS partition as being BTRFS, and can't mark it back as I can't find the numeric ID for BTRFS and how to apply.
Recently purchased an SSD drive to replace my existing mechanical drive. My source hard drive is a 750gb and destination SSD is 256gb. My current partition setup on my source drive looks like this: /home 639 GB, 137GB used / 46 GB, 6.4GB used
My destination SSD drive's partition table current looks like this: /home 238 GB / 18 GB
I originally was going to use Clonezilla to do the partition copying but found out that the destination partition must be equal or larger than the source one.
I had to change my disc for a bigger one, and i want to transfer all my dataconfigurations, etc to a partition in another disk, a simple ctrl C, ctrl V will do or theres a specific tool that i need? I dont want to download all the updates, programs and go through the hassle of reconfiguring everyhtingmy new disk have windows 7 and i installed a fresh ubuntu on it but i want it to be a clone of my old onePS: i just notice now that grub no longer recognize both win7, the old and the new. What's wrong?
I can take apart my computer and fix a problem and then re-install the partitions. Hopefully I won't have to re-install, but I want to make backups just in case
-HP laptop with a windows (NTFS) and an Ubuntu (ext3) partition ~ 500GB total -Iomega 1TB external hard drive partitioned into a 500GB NTFS storage, 250GH BLANK ext3 Linux Backup, and 250GB BLANK NTFS Windows Backup.
I want to copy my windows and linux to their respective 250GB spaces on the External HD.
1.) Can you direct me to places on the net that describes this in detail? 2.) Can I copy a partition while running that partition? 3.) Will copying C:/ in windows over to the external HD copy entire partition? 4.) Can I copy a Laptop partition to a external HD partition that is bigger? 5.) Do I have to use partition manager software or can I do this from terminal/cmd prompt?
I originally had an Ubuntu partition on my hard drive which occupied about half of it. I installed Windows 7 in the remaining unallocated space and I was planning on doing a grub update from a live cd afterwards. BUT when I looked at my partition table, the space where the ubuntu partition used to be is now unallocated space!
have a binary image that I can copy to a partition and have done so successfully in the past. The image is smaller than the partition size, and everything is all good. However, I noticed that in copying the 5 gb image to the 9 gb partition there are 4 gb that are unnoticed by the system. It still registers the partition at the correct size in Gparted and Disk Utility.
I have read several manuals and online html on how to clone a partition to a greater one, I am still not sure about what to do.
Code: Select all# df -k /srv /usr Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/md5 38445384 195236 36297128 1% /srv /dev/md3 8648896 1088016 7121540 14% /usr
What is the recommended procedure to clone i.e. /dev/mdx (/usr) partition to a greater one, say /dev/mdy, to accommodate for growth, whilst preserving attributes including timestamps (and yes, that means also including ctime).All of # cp -ax SOURCE DEST, # rsync -ax SOURCE DEST and # cpio modify ctime.Some sites recommend dd, i.e.:
URL....However, I am not sure what will dd copy do with end of partition, and will it see the remaining space on /srv (it's contents are dummy and will be overwritten).
When I first switched from windoze to Fedora I trimed a bit of space off the end of the HDD, formatted it to ext3 and installed Fedora 14 there. I have now completely rebuilt the machine and put a 2TB drive in. My intention was to upgrade to Fedora 15, but after a few weeks trying to get the new gnome to anything resembling useful, I gave up and decided to go back to the reliable 14.
I tried the old drive, and everything worked great, so I though no problem, clone that over to the new drive, and job done, no need to mess about for weeks getting all my settings back. I booted from the old drive with both connected and ran gparted, It sees both drives but won't let me copy the old partition. It complains about 'LMV is not yet supported' I tried booting from a gparted ISO with the same result.
How can I get this sorted? I've got work needing done, I don't have time to start from scratch (*AGAIN*),
I have a dual boot and every program I try to clone the ubuntu partition seems to want to have the entire hard drive to clone to.In other words, if I attach an external hard drive and select the ext4 Ubuntu Linux to clone to a purposefully made ext4 partition in an external drive - every program wants to copy to the entire external hard drive.Any suggestions?I think that clonezilla allows more freedom but I just dont quite get it - the options seem a little confusing in that I am worried that I will copy the partition back to my actual machine.
I am probably being a bit paranoid, but if anyone can think of a simple program that allows me to simply copy one partition to another purpose made (external) partition then please let me know!!
My dad passed away 2 years ago and he had a toshibia laptop, and today I've decided to start using it. I would like to reformat it to Arch Linux from Windows XP.
He has a 80gb hdd with everything on one partition (thats how windows does it). I would like to create another partition (~20gb, and I know how to do this) and have clonezilla clone the main partition and save it to the 20gb partition. This is because you can't clone and save to the same drive unless its partitioned. (I'm saying partition lot).
Anyway my fathers computer is very important to me, and having it remain intact as he left it is very very important to me. I know the easiest and most sarcastic response is to tell me not to use it, but I want to use this computer.
Does anyone have experience with clonezilla? Will it back up the ENTIRE HDD like it says it will, without missing any important documents and files scattered throughout the disc? And when I do finish the cloning, format, and at a later date restore using the image I copied, will it be like I never touched it?
I want to move the entire contents of my backup HD to another HD. I could manually copy everything, but I was hoping to clone the entire backup hard drive. I tried to do it with Gparted, but as far as I can tell, I can't clone between drives, only between partitions on the same drive (I've done that before). So how can I do this in Linux? I think one of my drives came with a cloning utility on a CD, but I'm not sure I still have the CD.
I bought an 1tb hard disk today and cloned my old 160gb ubuntu install to the new disk using gddrescue (from this tutorial [URL]) and everything worked fine. The problem is that I can't resize my home partition to fill the rest of the disk. I've tried using a live-cd and booting from my 160gb hard disk but I still can't resize the partition.
Here's the "sudo fdisk -l" output:
Quote:
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
i am running ubuntu 10.10 and windows7 on a asus eee 1015. currently i have two partitions: 80GB for windows (NTFS) and 160Gb for Ubuntu (ext4).
I want to:
- shrink the windows partition (easy, no worries);
- Shrink the ubuntu partition
- join the space thus created in a third partition that i can use for storage, media etc accessible by both windows and ubuntu
The problem:
- i could not manage to get gparted live to run off USB stick (i get the unable to find medium.... error)
- even if i would get gparted to work and i succeed in shrinking the ubuntu partition as well, the two spaces reclaimed will be divided by the ubuntu partition, which means they cannot be joined in a third partition.
so here is what i want to do:
- shrink windows and create a new partition;
- format this new partition as ext4;
- somehow "clone" the data on my current ubuntu root into the new partition;
- format the current root as NTFS and use it as the storage partition
i am aware this may mean i would have to re-set grub etc but would the cloning of the partition be possible? that i would need to clone data from a 160G partition into a 40G partition.
BY THE WAY - forgot to mention that i have tried to load clonezilla off an USB drive and i get the same error: "unable to find medium..."
I need to copy partition table for sda, I have 3 primary partitions and 1 extended partition on sda. I understand that fdisk cant copy extended partition table and I need to use sfdisk.
Correct me if I am wrong -
1. For primary partitions
Code: dd if=sda-mbr.bin of=/dev/sdX bs=1 count=64 skip=446 seek=446 2. For extended partition Code: sfdisk -d /dev/sda2 > backup-sdX.sf Where it will store the files after backing them up. I tried SUSE 11.2 DVD, it has back up partition table utility under repairs-advanced options but it suggests saving partition table to floppy. Why it doesnt offer to save it on a removable medium or to CD.
