Cloning Win7 drive using Linux

wftomlin · Jul 2, 2015

Okay...I've learned my lesson. I've replaced 3 Seagate 2TB drives in the last 6 months. ALL were less than 2 years old. They are JUNK!! I've never had problems with WD drives and that's what I'm going with. Here's what I need to know. Before the last one goes - the D: drive in my main WIn7 machine, I think I'm going to clone it onto a WD drive. Because the C: drive is small, I installed some programs onto the D: drive (the one I'm going to clone). They are in D:/Program Files and D:/Program Files (x86).

I have a Linux machine with a dual drive external docking station. What can I use to clone the drive and will it work in the Win7 machine and run the installed programs?

Thanks.

ex_bubblehead · Jul 3, 2015

There are plenty of titles to choose from: https://www.google.com/search?q=linux+disc+cloning+software&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

And, yes, the drive will still work with Windows 7

skittle · Jul 3, 2015

You could use dd
Where SDA is your D drive and SDB is new drive
$ dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

Or you can use rsync or any other tool, there are many like 'clonezilla'.

The archwiki has good info. Read it all:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Disk_cloning

wftomlin · Jul 5, 2015

Thanks for replying. Looks like I'll give Clonezilla a try.

wftomlin · Jul 17, 2015

After doing some more research, it seemed that dd was pretty straightforward. I put the two 3TB drives in the docking station and ran gparted to get the specifics. The damaged disk is about 60% full with some bad blocks. Then I started the process with:

sudo dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sdd conv=noerror

So far, it's still running - at 87 hours.

Does that seem normal?

McHenryB · Jul 17, 2015

The trouble with "dd" is that it copies every block, whether it's used by the file system or not, which is going to take a while (although 87 hours sounds excessive - are you using a USB2 docking station? That will be slow.)

Clonezilla would have been a wiser choice because it knows which bits of the file system need to be copied and which are unused.

wftomlin · Jul 17, 2015

My bad...63 hours. I remember now that I started it at midnight Wednesday, not Tuesday. And yes, it's a USB2 connection. At this point, I'm not sure whether to let it go or stop it and use Clonezilla.

Thanks for replying. I appreciate your response.

ex_bubblehead · Jul 17, 2015

dd is anything but fast. 3TB over a USB 2.0 connection I'd be surprised if it took less than a week. Clonezilla would be much faster as it only copies the blocks that are actually being used.

wftomlin · Jul 17, 2015

Thanks all.

I'm stopping it and going with Clonezilla.

wftomlin · Jul 17, 2015

Well...that's not working :fou:

This is the last part of the output:

Searching for data partition(s) in target disk for post process: sdd...
Excluding busy partition or disk...
Unmounted partitions (including extended or swap): sdd1 sdd2 sdd3
Collecting info.... done!
*****************************************************.
Now tuning the file system size on partition /dev/sdd1 to fit the partition size...
"EFI" is an unknown or unsupported filesystem... Skip resizing that.
*****************************************************.
Now tuning the file system size on partition /dev/sdd2 to fit the partition size...
"Microsoft" is an unknown or unsupported filesystem... Skip resizing that.
*****************************************************.
Now tuning the file system size on partition /dev/sdd3 to fit the partition size...
"Basic" is an unknown or unsupported filesystem... Skip resizing that.
*****************************************************.
Creating the swap partition if exists...
*****************************************************.
Trying to remove udev hardware record in the restored OS...
The specified destination device: sdd1 sdd2 sdd3
Trying to remove udev persistent files. The devices to be searched: sdd1 sdd2 sdd3...
Now searching possible device /dev/sdd1...
Now searching possible device /dev/sdd2...
Now searching possible device /dev/sdd3...
done!
*****************************************************.
Device /dev/sdd1 is not a FAT partition.
Skip updating syslinux on that.
Device /dev/sdd2 is not a FAT partition.
Skip updating syslinux on that.
Device /dev/sdd3 is not a FAT partition.
Skip updating syslinux on that.
*****************************************************.
Run grub install on disk sdd...
The grub directory is NOT found. Maybe it does not exist (so other boot manager exists) or the file system is not supported in the kernel. Skip running grub-install.
*****************************************************.
Try to run partclone.ntfsfixboot for NTFS boot partition if it exists. Scanning partition(s): sdd1 sdd2 sdd3...
The NTFS boot partition was not found or not among the restored partition(s). Skip running partclone.ntfsfixboot.
*****************************************************.
Checking if udevd rules have to be restored...
Ending /usr/sbin/ocs-onthefly at 2015-07-17 21:13:38 EDT...
Press "Enter" to continue......
xxxxxxxx@UbuntuMate:~$

The 2nd to the last line says to press "Enter" and when I do it just kicks me out to the command prompt.

I've tried pretty much every option. Anybody see anything obvious?

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Cloning Win7 drive using Linux

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