Why Doesn’t A Clone Of My Bootable ubuntu Boot?

[box02-0]

Hi.

Here is what gparted shows for the cloned SSD when I plug it into my Desktop Esata:

label flag
/dev/sda FAT32 esp boot,esp

it all looks good.

In the DELL BIOS, I did try to disable the Internal SSD so that I could try to boot the External cloned SSD with no other drive in the system. The problem is that there is this silly NVME Optane 32gb drive which requires there to be some kind of a "fake" software RAID setup.

In order to disable the internal SATA drive, I had to turn off this software RAID flag, which I did. I then plugged in the cloned SSD (USBC to SATA), booted with an F12, and NO bootable drive showed up at all! This with ONLY the cloned SSD plugged in.

Then, when I turned the software RAID flag back on and booted with an F12, the internal SSD did NOT show up. YIKES!! Scared the daylights out of me.

I then ran DELL DIAGS from the BIOS, and it fixed the problem - the Internal SSD was once again, bootable.

In my desktop, the BIOS allows me to enable/disable any drive. The DELL BIOS does not seem to allow me to do that without possibly wiping out the boot flag on the Internal SSD.

Bottom line is that I still can't boot the cloned SSD.

What to try next ??

Thanks,
M...

[TheFu]

Perhaps the planned disk-swap recovery method isn't going to work?

[tea for one]

The problem is that there is this silly NVME Optane 32gb drive which requires there to be some kind of a "fake" software RAID setup.

Is that a separate physical drive?
Are you dual booting with Windows 10?

Does this web site provide any help? https://help.ubuntu.com/rst/

I'm not at all familiar with RAID but there are some forum posts about turning off RAID and installing Ubuntu with AHCI.

[box02-0]

Hi.

DELL 7791 UEFI laptop setup:

-512gb NVME that came with Windows 10 installed.

-32gb NVME drive that is the DELL Optane drive cache/accelerator that is entirely controlled by DELL. In order to take advantage of the Optane feature (speed), the system comes from DELL with a Software RAID setup. It is not a conventional multiple drive RAID setup – that is all I know about it. Disabling this Software Raid flag in the BIOS wipes out the Windows Boot Manager for the 512gb NVME (ask me how I know this.…).

- I added a 1tb SATA SSD where I installed ubuntu 20.04.

- Each of the drives has multiple partitions where data files are stored.

- To backup either of the drives, I plug in a 1tb or 512gb SSD via a SATA to USBC cable. For Windows backup (512gb NVME), we use Macrium which allows you to clone partitions. For ubuntu backup (1tb SSD), I use Gparted to clone partitions (cut/paste), or it’s Terminal to “dd” clone the entire 1tb SSD.

The DELL laptop is actually my wife’s machine. I added ubuntu in order to wean her off of Windows. She boots with F12 and selects Windows or ubuntu.

So it does appear that for whatever reason, the Cloned 1tb External SSD cannot be booted via F12 as the DELL Bios does not see it as a bootable drive (even though it is identical to the 1tb Internal SSD).

I guess that's pretty much it.

Thanks for all your help. Stay Safe,
M....

[dragonfly41]

I too am on Dell (3268) with Windows 10 on internal drive and Ubuntu on external USB3 SSD.
I can only suggest trying to install ReFIND to give an alternative loader option in EFI folder. Works fine for me.

[box02-0]

Hi dragonfly41.

I have downloaded "refind_0.12.0-1_amd64.deb".

I'm a little chicken to just install it.

Where does it install? How do I invoke it?

Thanks for the tip.
M...

[dragonfly41]

Basically refind can be safely installed either in your internal drive or in the external SSD (which I prefer).
Looking at my setup I have /boot/efi/EFI in external SSD and inside there I have
> Boot
> Dell
> Microsoft
> refind
> tools
> ubuntu

Now that partition I created before installing Ubuntu and it has boot flags set through Gparted.

When you boot up choose the loader (in boot menu) at ..
/boot/efi/EFI/refind/refind_x64.efi

Later you can hack refind.conf to customise the GUI.

Google search for papers on refind written by Rob Smith.

Refind does not overwrite grub installations - it adds to them.
When you install refind you point to your external bootable SSD.

[tea for one]

It wasn't clear from your original post that you had 3 separate drives.

As Ubuntu is installed on a separate disk, which was added after purchase, it seems odd that you cannot then replace this disk and still boot an OS.
Possibly the cloning operation was not perfect as it cannot be tested.
A back up is never trustworthy until it is restored (similar to an insurance company until you want to make a claim )

Here's another suggestion:-

Make a bootable USB stick with Clonezilla https://clonezilla.org/
Clone your Ubuntu SSD with the Device to Device option
Remove the source Ubuntu drive
Insert the cloned drive
Leave the Windows 512GB nvme and 32GB nvme Optane drives in situ so as not to interfere with the additional problem of losing the Windows boot manager.

To boot or not to boot, that is the question........

[box02-0]

Thanks for the info.

I would really not remove the 2nd Internal SSD - very fragile connectors that were not designed to be plugged in/out very often. Ideally I could disable the drive through the BIOS, but DELL does not appear to allow that.

I do have faith that "dd" made a proper clone. In my desktop (2 internal drives, one a clone of the other) after I clone the drive, I turn it off via the BIOS and boot with the backup and check it out. Then I turn the backup drive off and the active drive back on via the BIOS. Easy, peasy.

I will try refind. Sounds like a plan.

You've all been a big help.

Stay Safe,
M...

[dragonfly41]

Just for extra information I now keep my two external SSD's in an external docking bay which is connected to Dell only through a USB3 connection (USB3 is necessary for performance). This allows me to unplug SSD's or switch power off at docking bay.
If that setup is of interest I can post more details.