Clone OMV install from larger HDD to smaller SSD?

Adrian E · 21. Januar 2015

Hi folks

I have OMV setup just the way I want it, so would rather not have to reinstall from scratch. At the moment my HP Micro Server is running the supplied HDD with OMV on it (250GB from memory) and after cloning the OS drive on my desktop I now have a spare Crucial M4 128GB SSD sitting here, which I'd like to install for running OMV in the micro server.

I used Clonezilla to image my old SSD onto the new one, so familiar with that. Unfortunately it can't deal with imaging a larger drive onto a smaller one. I'm not that familiar with Linux use, purely because OMV is the only thing I use it for, so not sure if shrinking, then re-expanding the image size in Linux is straightforward to do, or if there's an alternative method?

Grateful for a steer

Adrian

WastlJ · 21. Januar 2015

I´d boot gparted for example, shrink the existing HDD (to for example 100GB), then make an image with Clonezilla, install it onto the SSD and expand it with gparted.

Adrian E · 23. Januar 2015

Hiya

Thanks for the suggestion - did as advised and shrunk the partition down, but clonezilla still sees the drive as being smaller and refuses to copy it across? I've deleted the partitions that were sitting on the SSD so it's basically an unformatted disc as I thought that might be the issue. Have tried creating an image from the original HDD and restoring that to the SSD and it falls over again. Also tried telling clonezilla to ignore the size of the SSD in advanced options, with no change.

Am I missing a step here somewhere or is there a way to fool clonezilla into believing the HDD is smaller than it is?

ryecoaaron · 23. Januar 2015

Did you check the ICDS option in advanced on clonezilla?

Adrian E · 23. Januar 2015

Yes I did. I might just do a fresh install on the SSD instead. Is there a simple way to copy the configuration over if I do that instead?

ryecoaaron · 23. Januar 2015

If you can't get clonezilla to work, here is what I would do (forgive me if you know how to some of this):

Unplug data drives
boot SystemRescueCD
assume sda is new drive, sdb is drive to restore from
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/backup
dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sda bs=446 count=1
fdisk /dev/sda - create main partition and swap partition
mkswap /dev/sda2
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1

blkid
tune2fs /dev/sda1 -U uuid_from_sdb1_from_blkid

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/gentoo
rsync -aAXv /mnt/backup/* /mnt/gentoo/ --exclude=/lost+found
umount /mnt/gentoo /mnt/backup
reboot

boot Debian Squeeze install cd and select Rescue Mode from Advanced options.
Reinstall grub boot loader on /dev/sda or the following command from shell
grub-install /dev/sda

willri · 23. Januar 2015

I think the job Adrian wants to do is easily ( now as I know ) done with Bootit Baremetal.
It's also very useful for Windows.

All the linux commands are "chinese" for me and I don't know what's goging on there.

ryecoaaron · 23. Januar 2015

All of those commands are the manual way of cloning an os to a new drive.

Nyctophilia · 29. Januar 2015

If the suggested methods won't work out for you, you also can try a bootable Acronis(based on Linux)-live.iso - You can migrate Images without any problems.

earbiter · 29. Januar 2015

If clonezilla(CZ) is failing because the drive size is different then do it at the partition level. Once you have shrunk the partition then cz to back it up/verify. Then cz to restore it and boot-repair live-cd (32 or 64bits) to rebuild the MBR/grub so it will boot.

(or cz to copy the partition between drives. I like to back everything up just in case!)

Jetzt mitmachen!