Latest Clonezilla AMD64 Fails to clone disk
A partition and disk imaging/cloning program
Brought to you by:
steven_shiau
Menu
▾
▴
I am trying to clone sda to sdb, but Clonezilla fails to clone the drive. The disk geometries:
orca:/home/mark# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x81d6785f
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 5 40131 de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 * 6 1918 15360000 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 1918 7017 40963092+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 7018 38913 256204620 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 * 7018 37615 245778403+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 37616 38913 10426153+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Note: sector size is 4096 (not 512)
Disk /dev/sdb: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 11400 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 4096 = 65802240 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00004ae6
When I run the latest testing version of the amd64 clonezilla live, I picked the following options
device to device
proportional partition table
all other defaults
Clonezill seems to complete cloning the partition table and sda1 to sdb1, but then it fails with the error message that partition sdb2 does not exist (same for sdb3, sdb4, sdb5, sdb6). It also reports that sdb is smaller than sda, which is true by sector count, but does not take into account that the sectors are different sizes. Can Clonezilla clone drives with different sector sizes?
I also tried using the option to clone the partition table directly, and that failed as well.
How do I set up Clonezilla to clone sda to sdb in the scenario?
Thanks,
Mark
Could you please give Clonezilla live 1.2.9-19 or 20110721-natty a try?
This was an issue which might be related to this, so the results might be different.
Please let us know the results.
Thanks.
Steven.
Neither version worked.
1.2.9-19 -amd64: reported that the target size is less than the source size, so it did not take into account the different sector sizes (source has 512 b sectors, targe has 4096). I tried the porportional sector table and that had same problem.
20110721-natty: wold not run on my hardware - got to a gray box and then nothing was displayed by Us using 640x480
and 1024x768. With vga=normal, I got the error Fatal: error 2.6.38-10-generic/initrd/vesafb.ko no such device.
Does Clonezilla support cloning from a 512 byte sector device to a 4096 sector device?
Mark
"Does Clonezilla support cloning from a 512 byte sector device to a 4096 sector device?" -> Basically yes, if partclone thinks the destination partition is equal to or larger than the source one.
Here we did some tests before, and we could successfully take a 512-byte sector device as an image, and restore it to 4096-byte one. However, after restoring, we need to use this tool to tune:
http://www.wdc.com/global/products/features/?id=7&language=1
Steven.
What settings did you use to clone from 512 to 4096?
Whenever I try it, I get hit with the target is smaller than the source using your defaults and proportional partition table. In my case, the source has more sectors than the target, but the target is still a larger drive. The target is a 750 GB drive, 4096 b sectors, and a total of 183,143,646 sectors. The source is a 320 GB drive with 512 b sectors and a total of 625,142,448 sectors.
Did your 4096 target have more sectors than the 512 source?
Mark
IIRC, what we have done is to save the 512-byte sector disk as an image, then restore it with default, beginner mode. Maybe it's different from yours since you mentioned "clone" instead of "image".
We will try to see if we can reproduce this issue here. However, first we have to find such a disk…
Let me know if you have any progress there.
Thanks.
Steven.
Steven,
I am trying to do a disk to disk clone - the first or second option on the menu. I don't have a third disk big enough to save an image to, and then restore the image to the new disk.
Can I save the image to a network drive, and then restore from a network drive? I may be able to do that.
Thanks
Mark
"Can I save the image to a network drive, and then restore from a network drive? I may be able to do that." -> Definitely yes.
In this menu:
http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live/doc/01_Save_disk_image/images/ocs-07-img-repo.png
You can choose to save the image on SSH server, Samba Server, or NFS server.
Steven.
All I have is rsync to my NAS. So I need to be able to use the cone device to device option, which is not working.
Mark
So your NAS does not support SSH? Normally a NAS server supports samba or NFS, too.
Maybe you can try to change the configuration of your NAS server?
Steven.
It only does rsync or ftp, or I can mount the nas on my local file system. No other configurations are possible.
Please test a device to device clone with the source a 512 b sector drive and the target a 4096 sector drive, where the number of sectors on the target is less than the number of sectors on the source, even though the target is larger than the source, to fix the problem I am having.
Thanks,
Mark
We'd like to test the 512-byte sector to 4k-byte one. However, we do not have 4k-byte sector harddrive now. The one we tested was borrowed from others.
We will try to borrow another one recently.
Steven.
I tried your advice of saving an image and restoring from that image, instead of disk to disk. I still have sector size problems.
After restoring to the 750 GB drive, I have this:
Disk /dev/sda: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders, total 1465149168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x81d6785f
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 63 80324 40131 de Dell Utility
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda2 * 81920 30801919 15360000 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 30801920 112728104 40963092+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4 112728105 625137344 256204620 5 Extended
Partition 4 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sda5 * 112728168 604284974 245778403+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 604285038 625137344 10426153+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Partition 6 does not start on physical sector boundary.
orca:/home/mark#
Note the (1) errors and (2) the Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes - it should be 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes.
I have a Seagate drive, and they do not have any utilities to "tune" the hard drive like WD.
When do you think Clonezilla will be able to clone from a 512 byte sector drive to a 4096 byte sector drive correctly?
Mark
"When do you think Clonezilla will be able to clone from a 512 byte sector drive to a 4096 byte sector drive correctly?" -> This is a good question…
Now we are purchasing the hard drive, and once it's delivered, we will start working on that.
Steven.
Steven,
Any progress on this problem? I still need to clone from a 512 byte sector drive to a 4096 byte sector drive.
The problem is that Clonezilla thinks the target drive is smaller than the source drive because there are fewer sectors on the target drive. However, the target drive is 750 GB and the source is 350 GB.
Thanks,
Mark
Not really.
We had those disks already. However, it seems we can not reproduce this issue here.
Is that possible we can remote login to your machine to test this?
If so, please email me at <steven _at_ nchc org tw>.
Steven.
Hi, I see this is an older thread, so apologies for bumping it if that's not kosher. I am having the same problems. I am trying to clone a 640 GB hard drive with 512 sectors to a 750 GB hard drive with 4k sectors and am running into the problem of the source supposedly being larger than the target, apparently due to it having more sectors.
If you are using the latest version of Clonezilla, then it seems the problem was never addresses. The only solution I found was to forget Clonezilla, format the new drive, install your OS on the new drive, and then copy your data from the old drive to the new drive.
We could not reproduce the "4k sectors" issue here… since it's not reproducible here, we have no idea how to fix it.
If you guys have the exact same issue, and would like to let us remote login to test, please email me at <steven _at_ nchc org tw>.
For security, you can remove all the data on source and destination disks, but create some partitions and file systems on them, and make sure the issue could be reproduced. Once we can reproduce it, it's possible this issue could be fixed.
Steven.
Hi guys, I am dealing with the same problem and using the latest Clonezilla. Have you figured out a way to deal with this without having to install new OS and copy data?
Nadia
Not really… Since we can not reproduce the problem here. It's very difficult for us to fix this issue.
Steven.
Not serious.
It should be not the APP problems.
The product below is simple with some
automatic setting of disk clone.
{http://www.pcdisktools.com/pcdiskclone.htm}
Oh,the link should be http://www.pcdisktools.com/pcdiskclone.htm
How could I edit the post above?
Got into the same problem today ("drive too small") and found the solution. If you attach the old drive (512 bytes) directly to the controler and the new drive (4k) via the USB cable the clonning will error out. However, if you swap them (new drive inside the laptop and the old on USB) it will work fine. Using the latest stable version available.
Thank you @onenightstand!! I swapped my SSDs in my MacBook 2007 running a version of Clonezilla I downloaded in 2020 (contains Partclone v0.3.13 chugging away as we speak)
If details helps anyone: I specifically pulled out my older 120GB PNY SSD w 512b sectors and attached it to my SATA2USB cable and put my newwer 240GB Crucial SSD w 4k sectors in the Macbook.
While I totally get this is open source, it would be nice to see a fix for an issue that's been open for 9 years (7 since you posted the workaround!)
This is the first time I am using Clonezilla to upgrade my SSD and not knowing about this workaround definitely made for a frustrating exprience and just glad there is a workaround and we can get on our merry way!