Ubuntu 18.04 not detected upon cloning to 8 TB SSD

Question

Hello everybody out there using Ubuntu,

Since I was running out of disk space, I cloned my Ubuntu 18.04 installation from a 4TB SSD (Samsung) to a 8TB SSD (also Samsung) using dd. Afterwards, I expanded the Ubuntu partition from 4TB to 8TB on the SSD using GParted.

Although there was a GPT partition table on the 4TB SSD (which was and is booting fine) GParted didn't find a partition table initially and asked me whether it should create one. I confirmed it should create a GPT table, which I confirmed with the sudo parted command (while having booted to the old 4 TB hard-disk and having attached the new 8 TB one as an external disk with an USB adapter):

Model: Samsung Portable SSD T1 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 8002GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags:
Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name  Flags
 1      1049kB  2097kB  1049kB                     bios_grub
 2      2097kB  8002GB  8002GB  ext4

In addition, I checked the output of sudo gdisk -l /dev/sdb:

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.3
Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present
Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sdc: 15628053168 sectors, 7.3 TiB
Model: Portable SSD T1 
Sector size (logical/physical): 512/512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 77496514-CFD9-4986-81C9-0ADDBD4EF3F9
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 15628053134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 2669 sectors (1.3 MiB)
Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1            2048            4095   1024.0 KiB  EF02

   2            4096     15628052479   7.3 TiB     8300

However, my Thinkpad X230 does not boot from the 8TB SSD with the error message:

2100: Detection error on HDD0 (Main HDD)

A web search also turned up some results mentioning this could be due to a hardware error, but the 4 TB disk is working fine. The 8 TB disk also works fine, because I can mount it and open the data I had cloned from the 4 TB one. However, I can't boot the 8 TB disk.

Which additional diagnostics could I run to pin down the problem?

Please not that I already ran a fsck -af /dev/sdb2 to rule out potential filesystem errors.

Moreover, I used the boot-repair package for Ubuntu to fix the problem to no success (despite a positive report of the results).

With the new SSD, try switching boot mode in the BIOS to legacy support or vice versa ... boot in the new mode once before switching it back and see if that helps. — Raffa, Jun 18 '22 at 12:38
Did you check, that the physical sector sizes are the same on the two SSDs? Did you use gdisk to fix the backup partition table at the tail end of the target drive after cloning? See also this link (1), this link (2) and this link (3) — sudodus, Jun 18 '22 at 12:41

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 26 '22 at 11:59

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The problem actually turned out not to be caused by the new 8 TB SSD, but rather by an additional mSATA, for which the ThinkPad has an additional slot. Disabling it in /etc/fstab solved the problem.

answered Sep 26 '22 at 11:59

NicolasBourbaki

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Ubuntu 18.04 not detected upon cloning to 8 TB SSD

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