Successful process using Rescuezilla doesn't boot
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I'm new to rescuezilla and recently I wanted to create a bootable image of my Linux Mint OS. My system is on a 1TB HDD with a 2nd mounted 4TB HDD. I first initialized a 1TB USB 3.x flash as a EXFAT bootable and I copied rescuezilla to another USB flash containing Ventoy. When I booted from the Ventoy USB I was presented with a menu of available OSes. I chose Rescuezilla and it booted just fine. I then selected to backup my 1TB hdd (sd1) and its target was my 1TB USB (/media/user/whatever). Once it started it ran for over 20 HOURS (Ouch) but it completed normally and rebooted back to normal.
I then examined the resulting 1TB USB and it looked as expected. I then booted from it and my BIOS complained that there was no OS found on the boot disk. Again, when I examined it it showed a rescuezilla file that was bootable. I even tried that 1TB USB on other machines with the same results.
I'm kind of at a loss at this time and honestly don't know what to do next. I found no errors on the process screen nor any errors in the system logs.
Just wondering if anyone has any advise as to why this might have occurred? Just looking for a way to proceed with this. Thanks to anyone who has any suggestions.
Thanks
So you have:
And you created a backup of your Linux Mint OS to the 1TB USB drive?
And just to confirm, your source drive completely boots as normal, correct? It's just your destination USB stick that fails to boot?
OK, given what you have said it sounds like you used the 'Backup' (also known as "Imaging") option instead of the 'Clone' option. It sounds like your destination 1TB disk (that you formatted as EXFAT and marked as bootable) currently contains a bunch of files in a folder with name containing '-rescuezilla'. Those aren't bootable but they are used to restore to another disk.
If this is the case, the process it sounds like you should have selected is 'Clone' -- it would create a 1-to-1 clone of the disk, rather than an image. The first page of the 'Clone' wizard in Rescuezilla provides an overview of Cloning vs Imaging.
Separately, I should mention that I don't recommend booting with two identical disks attached -- because they share unique identifiers it can cause conflicts. If using the same computer, I recommend disconnecting one of the cloned drives when booting. But that's not the issue here.