Help with moving partitions

[Philip Rutkowski]

Hi! I have a triple boot OS X/Windows 10/Ubuntu on a 2012 Mac Pro 5,1 working perfectly with rEFInd 0.12.0. Thank you! I'm now upgrading this computer and I have 3 open SATA bays. I bought cheap SSDs hoping to speed up disk access for each OS by moving them to the SSDs. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure this is possible but from little hints on this forum and elsewhere, it seems like it might work???

Here is what I tried unsuccessfully:
1. Using gparted on Ubuntu, I created a gpt partition table on /dev/sdd (the new disk).
2. Also in gparted, I created a new ntfs partition on /dev/sdd to match the Windows partition on my triple boot disk.
3. I shrank /dev/sda5 (Windows partition) to match the size of the new partition (/dev/sdd1) on the new SSD.
4. Also on Ubuntu, I ran sudo dd if=/dev/sda5 of=/dev/sdd1 bs=16M status=progress

These steps completed successfully. I'm still able to triple boot into all 3 OS's on /dev/sda (even after shrinking Windows). In gparted, /dev/sdd1 looks like it matches /dev/sda5. rEFInd even finds the new Windows partition (/dev/sdd1) and displays it as an option. However, when it boots up, I get:
A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

I know I'm missing a step. What am I doing wrong? Or is this not even possible? I really appreciate everyone's time. Thanks in advance!!!

[joevt]

Is the disk a MBR or GPT or hybrid MBR/GPT? I expect either the first or the last. If it's the last, then maybe the partitions in the GPT don't match the partitions in the MBR.

You probably should have created the disk on macOS.
Anyway, post result of the following from macOS:
sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
sudo gpt -r show -l /dev/disk0
diskutil list disk0

Change the disk number from 0 to the one for your disk - use diskutil list to see all the disk numbers.

If the partitions are ok, then you may need to fix the Windows booter since the partitions changed. There are probably utilities to do that (Windows install DVD, etc.) Maybe winclone from twocanoes.com?

[Philip Rutkowski]

I think its a hybrid MBR/GPT. I can still play around with the new disk if you think I should try something. I'm all out of ideas! Everything looks OK to me. I think.... Thanks again!

$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Password:
Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 121601/255/63 [1953525168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE    0   0   1 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>
 2: AF 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [    409640 -  650390624] HFS+        
 3: 83 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 652069800 -  648437501] Linux files*
*4: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [1300508672 -  468858880] HPFS/QNX/AUX

$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk3
Disk: /dev/disk3    geometry: 29185/255/63 [468862128 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE    0   0   1 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -       2047] <Unknown ID>
*2: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [      2048 -  468858880] HPFS/QNX/AUX
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused      
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

 $ sudo gpt -r show -l /dev/disk0
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         MBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6         
          40      409600      1  GPT part - "EFI System Partition"
      409640   650390624      2  GPT part - "OS X"
   650800264     1269536      3  GPT part - "Recovery HD"
   652069800   648437501      4  GPT part - ""
  1300507301        1371         
  1300508672   468858880      5  GPT part - "BOOTCAMP"
  1769367552   184157583         
  1953525135          32         Sec GPT table
  1953525167           1         Sec GPT header

  $ sudo gpt -r show -l /dev/disk3
gpt show: /dev/disk3: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         MBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34       2014         
       2048  468858880      1  GPT part - "Windows"
  468860928       1167         
  468862095         32         Sec GPT table
  468862127          1         Sec GPT header

  $ diskutil list disk0
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS OS X                    333.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:           Linux Filesystem                         332.0 GB   disk0s4
   5:       Microsoft Basic Data Windows                 240.1 GB   disk0s5

   $ diskutil list disk3
/dev/disk3 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *240.1 GB   disk3
   1:       Microsoft Basic Data Windows                 240.1 GB   disk3s1

[joevt]

The output looks as expected. The partitions in the MBR match the partitions in the GPT.

Your macOS partition is HFS+ so it's not Catalina. what macOS are you using?

The other things I said in my previous post still apply:

The new disk should probably be formatted by macOS to get it's own EFI partition, then the NTFS partition created.

But before redoing the disk try the tools on the Windows installer to redo the Windows boot loader.
https://neosmart.net/wiki/recovering-windows-bootloader/
(probably skip the automatic repair - it will automatically cause problems, probably).

If that fails, you could try booting into the working Windows to repair the non-working Windows.
https://neosmart.net/wiki/easybcd/tips-and-tricks/recovering-windows-bootloader/

[Philip Rutkowski]

Thank you joevt. I didn't have any luck with Recovery Essentials or with formatting from macOS. I ended up creating a Windows 10 install from the Media Creation Tool. It was more work because I needed to reinstall everything in Windows.

Thanks again for your time.