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I have a ThinkPad that has two SSD slots and one HDD slot. I have Windows 10 on an SSD and ubuntu on the HDD. I dual boot using grub. The HDD is slow. So I want to remove it, and clone ubuntu to an SSD and utilize the second SSD slot.

I was planning to use the dd command to clone the ubuntu installation, but I was afraid that I might clone it to the SSD that had Windows. Thus, I removed the Windows SSD and tried to boot into ubuntu. But grub did not launch? Then, the ThinkPad utility tool displayed the installed hardware and asked me to choose the drive to boot from. I chose the HDD, which has ubuntu, and it did not launch. The list also showed the text ubuntu; clicked it, and it did not boot. When I re-installed the Window SSD, the grub launched as normal.

So my questions are the following:

  • where do those boot managers live, e.g., grub and Window-boot-manager? on one of the disks or on auxiliary storage on the motherboard?
  • after cloning ubuntu successfully, will grub work normally with the new drive?
  • when using the lsblk command, how do I know which SSD is which, i.e., the new one and the old one that has Windows installed.
Ahmad Abuaish
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  • Hello Ahmad. seems that you took out the drive where grub was installed. if you clone the installation (you can use clonezilla for that), and you keep all the drives installed, then you have to run update-grub and it will update grub with all the installed OS. Can you provide more information on you drives? (like the output of lsblk) – jpbrain Jul 11 '21 at 05:59
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    You should be using a Live USB to clone Ubuntu from the HDD to the SSD. You do not want to run dd from the disk you are cloning. The Windows SSD can then be removed without problem. The cloned SSD will use the same UUID's as the HDD so there should be no problem booting the new SSD once the Windows disk is plugged back in. – C.S.Cameron Jul 11 '21 at 11:40
  • I prefer Clonezilla for cloning and creating a compressed image of a drive or a partition. There is a learning curve, but when you know it, you have a very efficient tool. – sudodus Jul 14 '21 at 15:08

2 Answers2

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Clone Ubuntu installation on the same machine that has dual with Windows

Assuming GRUB is installed on the Windows SSD

You should be using a Live USB to clone Ubuntu from the HDD to the SSD. You do not want to run dd from the disk you are cloning.

The Windows SSD can then be removed during cloning without a need for it's bootloader.

The cloned SSD will use the same UUID's as the old HDD, so there should be no problem booting the new SSD once the Windows disk is plugged back in.

It is best not to plug two drives with the same UUID's into the running computer at once.

C.S.Cameron
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  • Thank you so much for responding. I used Clonezilla on a live USB to clone my Ubuntu from the HDD to the SSD. The cloning was successful. I removed the HDD and had both the Windows SSD and the newly cloned Ubuntu SSD installed in the machine. However, Grub did not launch! Further, I tried to boot to the new Ubuntu SSD via the Boot utility on my machine, and it did not work. It only boots to Window.

    What am I doing wrong? is there is a problem with UUID? do I need to update somewhere? I read in an earlier comment, that I might have to run update-grub on the Ubuntu installation on the old HHD

     – Ahmad Abuaish Jul 16 '21 at 17:44
  • I am not sure about Clonezilla, but programs that use dd as an engine, such as Etcher, Gnome-Disks, mkusb, etc, make an exact copy when they clone a disk. The clone has the same UUID as the original and should work when the new disk is plugged in, no need to update grub. I run sudo update-grub quite often without problem. – C.S.Cameron Jul 17 '21 at 01:21
  • Thanks for the response.

    I solved the problem after trying several methods. I was able to boot to the Linux drive using Super Grub on a live USB. However, boot-repair failed to run, and it instructed me to run it from a live USB. So, I burned boot-repair-disk on a USB, and I ran boot-repait from boot-repair-disk, and it worked. I had to keep format of the USB to NTFS.

     – Ahmad Abuaish Jul 18 '21 at 13:37
  • @Ahmad Abuaish Thank you for letting us know what worked for you. – C.S.Cameron Jul 18 '21 at 14:02
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balenaEtcher Clone Drive

The latest version of Etcher now has a Clone Drive option. This should add a layer of safety to just using dd.

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This works with both Internal and External drives. (Select show hidden when selecting system drives for Source or Target, I have not tried flashing with a running drive). Etcher will flash to multiple drives at a time.

With this method you should not need to unplug Windows drive.

C.S.Cameron
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