Unable to boot into Ubuntu after cloning NVME drive with Macrium Reflect

[vw16v]

Hello, I did a quick search and I believe this is the same or similar issue that I'm having after cloning my NVME 512 GB drive to a new 1 TB NVME.

I used Macrium Reflect to clone it and it seemed to work fine. I included a screen shot of my Disk Manager. The 161 GB partition is where my Ubuntu 24.04 resides. I cloned the NVME within Windows 11. I assumed that it would work based on some quick searches for Macrium Reflect dual boot. The Macrium Reflect software also saw this partition and cloned it. However, after I installed the replacement NVME it booted right to Windows. I confirmed that the BIOS boot order showed Ubuntu as the first OS. So, I used my USB thumb drive to boot to boot-repair tool. I ran the boot repair and it said it repaired the Dual boot but also came up with this message below.
https://imgur.com/w5LdMKY

https://imgur.com/C5a2e8q
Screen shot of Macrium Reflect showing all partitions including the 161 GB partition where Ubuntu is installed.
https://imgur.com/qk550gV
Screenshot of disk manager after clone was completed. Looks identical to Original NVME.
https://imgur.com/U4bdI4N


Based on my search results I believe I should attempt to boot off a Ubuntu Live CD and do what is mentioned in the linked post above?
Either do this:
1. Type sudo grub. Should get text of which last line is grub>
2. Type "find /boot/grub/stage1". You'll get a response like "(hd0,4)".
Use whatever your computer spits out for the following lines.
3. Type "root (hd0,4)",
4. Type "setup (hd0)", to install GRUB to MBR
5. Quit grub by typing "quit".
6. Reboot and remove the bootable CD.

Or boot off Live CD and restore GRUB via.

sudo grub-install /dev/sda

Thanks for any ideas!

[tea for one]

I wouldn't follow your link from 2011, which refers to an old legacy installation.
You have Windows in UEFI mode and hopefully Ubuntu is also.

Can you boot into Windows10/11?
If so, can you boot into a “Try Ubuntu” live session and download the boot-repair utility.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
2nd option – Create boot-repair summary and post the pastebin link to the report in this thread before attempting any repair.

[oldfred]

Do you have unique UUIDs & GUIDs. You cannot boot true clone with both drives connected as duplicates not allowed.
Also since to larger drive, often issue where backup gpt partition table is in middle of drive, You can use gdisk to move to end of drive.

lsblk -e 7 -o name,fstype,size,fsused,label,partlabel,mountpoint ,uuid,partuuid

[vw16v]

I wouldn't follow your link from 2011, which refers to an old legacy installation.
You have Windows in UEFI mode and hopefully Ubuntu is also.

Can you boot into Windows10/11?
If so, can you boot into a “Try Ubuntu” live session and download the boot-repair utility.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
2nd option – Create boot-repair summary and post the pastebin link to the report in this thread before attempting any repair.

Hi, thanks for your response. Yes, I can boot to Windows 11 fine. That's all I could boot to using the cloned NVME. Even when I manually select Ubuntu using F12 it boots right to Windows. I noticed that was an old thread after I posted this. I'm definitely using UEFI/GPT so that post probably does not apply as you mentioned.

Just to confirm, I'll need to run Try Ubuntu from a USB thumb Drive correct? The boot repair utility was run off a Linux PEN drive that has multiple Distros on the thumb drive. The boot-repair utility I ran said it saved the results to /var/log/boot-repair/DATE/Boot-info_Date
However, I wasn't sure how I could access this since I can't boot to Ubuntu? I should have emailed that output when I had the Clone installed but I wasn't connected to my network at the time. I probably could have saved it to a text file on my USB drive as well.

I'm tempted to create a Live Ubuntu USB and then trying to install GRUB that way. I'm still researching this but I want to make sure it will still boot Windows. I just want to be careful since my Original NVME drive is still working correctly and allows me to dual boot. Thanks for any additional ideas! I'm also tempted to try to clone the drive again using Clonezilla since it runs from a USB thumb drive and would clone the NVME when not in Windows.

[tea for one]

Yes, I can boot to Windows 11 fine

That's good news

Just to confirm, I'll need to run Try Ubuntu from a USB thumb Drive correct? The boot repair utility was run off a Linux PEN drive that has multiple Distros on the thumb drive. The boot-repair utility I ran said it saved the results to /var/log/boot-repair/DATE/Boot-info_Date

That destination /var/log/boot-repair/DATE/Boot-info_Date is the live session not your non-booting installed Ubuntu OS

Thanks for any additional ideas! I'm also tempted to try to clone the drive again using Clonezilla since it runs from a USB thumb drive and would clone the NVME when not in Windows.

I wouldn't use Clonezilla to clone Windows because you can already boot there successfully.

Here's a procedure I use to clone Ubuntu
You will need your source disk and target disk attached
Boot into a "Try Ubuntu" live session
Open Gparted
Right click your source Ubuntu partition
Copy to your target Ubuntu partition

Then double check that your ESP contains the Ubuntu folder (the Microsoft folder must be there because you can boot Windows 11)

Happiness will follow......

[ubfan1]

Probably the ...EFI/ubuntu/grub.cfg stub and the maintained /boot/grub/grub.cfg files have the old UUIDs, and the cloaned filesystems got new ones. Start with getting the UUIDs of all partitions by running sudo blkid in a terminal (take a pic for reference?). Identify your Ubuntu root's UUID, and confirm that the EFI/ubuntu/grub.cfg files uses that UUID and has the right partition number in the hints (hd?,gpt?). Edit if necessary to update to the new disk's root UUID. Then check the new /etc/fstab for using the new UUIDs everywhere (root and /boot/efi mount). Then check the /boot/grub/grub.cfg UUIDs and fix (either just the first boot and rerun update-grub after a successful boot to fix everything, or a blanket edit). That should be a solution to a non-booting disk. Macrium Reflect is pretty smart about cloaning, allowing resizing in the process, so I'd expect it would not duplicate UUIDs, but the actual files with the old UUIDs will not be changed.

[vw16v]

Thanks for the info @tea for one and @oldfred. Just to confirm, I removed my original NVME and put in the cloned one in my laptop before trying to dual boot. I can only boot to Windows. I might look into what tea for one just mentioned mentioned but it's not exactly clear. I'm assuming I should boot off the Ubuntu Live USB and run gparted and then copy my 162GB partition from Disk0 to Disk1 overwriting the current 162GB on Disk1?
https://imgur.com/U4bdI4N

I will also look into how to obtain the UUID of my current NVME while I have my original NVME drive installed that allows me to boot to Ubuntu. It should be in /etc/fstab or just running blkid as mentioned. I'm just not sure how I can obtain the UUID of the replacement clone? I'm guessing I can obtain that by re-installing the Cloned NVME and then booting off my Linux Pen drive that has the boot-repair utility installed. Or possibly just booting off a Ubuntu Live CD and trying to obtain the UUID of the cloned NVME that way? Sorry for my confusion but I'm a little rusty. Thanks again for these ideas but it's still not clear to me. I just need to reboot to the Ubuntu I currently have working/installed on my original drive.

[vw16v]

I just booted to my Ubuntu distro on my Original NVME drive.


I'm slightly confused why I have so many "nvme" entries in /dev ? It looks to be separate partitions where Windows, Linux , etc reside.

I have the following nvme in /dev:
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 259, 0 Oct 15 07:34 nvme0n1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 259, 1 Oct 15 07:34 nvme0n1p1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 259, 2 Oct 15 07:34 nvme0n1p2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 259, 3 Oct 15 07:34 nvme0n1p3
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 259, 4 Oct 15 07:34 nvme0n1p4
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 259, 5 Oct 15 07:34 nvme0n1p5

lsblk -d /dev/nvme0*
lsblk: /dev/nvme0: not a block device
NAME      MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
nvme0n1   259:0    0 476.9G  0 disk 
nvme0n1p1 259:1    0   260M  0 part /boot/efi
nvme0n1p2 259:2    0    16M  0 part 
nvme0n1p3 259:3    0   314G  0 part 
nvme0n1p4 259:4    0 161.7G  0 part /var/snap/firefox/common/host-hunspell
                                    /
nvme0n1p5 259:5    0  1000M  0 part

sudo fdisk -l 
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 476.94 GiB, 512110190592 bytes, 1000215216 sectors
Disk model: SAMSUNG MZVLB512HBJQ-000L2              
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 5DCC9C27-D1C2-4A0A-832F-79FB9021C8F4

Based on fdisk -l output below it appears my UUID is 5DCC9C27-D1C2-4A0A-832F-79FB9021C8F4 for /dev/nvme0n1

sudo fdisk -l 
Device             Start        End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1      2048     534527    532480   260M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2    534528     567295     32768    16M Microsoft reserved
/dev/nvme0n1p3    567296  659081215 658513920   314G Microsoft basic data
/dev/nvme0n1p4 659081216  998166527 339085312 161.7G Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p5 998166528 1000214527   2048000  1000M Windows recovery environmen

For example,

sudo blkid /dev/nvme0n1
/dev/nvme0n1: PTUUID="5dcc9c27-d1c2-4a0a-832f-79fb9021c8f4" PTTYPE="gpt"

sudo blkid /dev/nvme0n1p1
/dev/nvme0n1p1: LABEL_FATBOOT="SYSTEM_DRV" LABEL="SYSTEM_DRV" UUID="D0E8-205E" BLOCK_SIZE="512" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI system partition" PARTUUID="4c29f2dc-736f-4b76-a238-b3224e258df2"

And here's my /etc/fstab output

cat fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/nvme0n1p5 during installation
UUID=f3409908-cd51-4af4-9735-c5373816ba49 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# /boot/efi was on /dev/nvme0n1p1 during installation
UUID=D0E8-205E  /boot/efi       vfat    umask=0077      0       1
/swapfile                                 none            swap    sw

Thanks for any additional input!

[tea for one]

I might look into what tea for one just mentioned mentioned but it's not exactly clear. I'm assuming I should boot off the Ubuntu Live USB and run gparted and then copy my 162GB partition from Disk0 to Disk1 overwriting the current 162GB on Disk1?

Yes, that's it. (Disk 0 = Source and Disk 1 = Target)
Gparted will take care of the UUIDs, you do not have to look for them.
Just make sure that your ESP contains the original Ubuntu folder ( I would doubt that Macrium Reflect has damaged/changed it)
You must not reboot with both nvme disks attached because "UUID Clash"

[vw16v]

Yes, that's it. (Disk 0 = Source and Disk 1 = Target)
Gparted will take care of the UUIDs, you do not have to look for them.
Just make sure that your ESP contains the original Ubuntu folder ( I would doubt that Macrium Reflect has damaged/changed it)
You must not reboot with both nvme disks attached because "UUID Clash"

Ok, so boot off any distro that has gparted installed with my original/dual boot working NVME installed and my Cloned NVME hooked up via my USB-C NVME enclosure and then copy the Linux 162GB on the installed NVME over to the clone NVME on hooked up via USB-C enclosure. Is that correct?
Thanks again!