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tried to rebuild old 75gb drive onto new 475gb drive for laptop - used gparted to partition new drive similar to old drive but bigger partitions, then used G4L (ghost for linux) to backup old drive partitions as lsop images, then restore images to each partition on new drive. wouldn't boot at all afterwards - just blinking cursor.

So, installed MX linux onto new partition (sda6 logical partition) which got it's grub version installed, used it to boot into ubuntu and used ubuntu boot repair and got ubuntu boot menu back. Boots into ubuntu and MX fine, but win 7 now shows up as on sda1 (my recovery and boot partition) and sda2 (where win 7 system files, etc. actually are)- choosing sda2's win7 just ends up at blinking cursor, and sda1's win7 gets error message saying boot off of win7 install cd (that I don't have)... How do I get win 7 to boot again off grub?!?

The MAJOR
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  • Does this answer your question? Unable to boot into Windows after installing Ubuntu, how to fix? – karel Oct 09 '23 at 04:54
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    When cloning from the old drive to the new one, do not create partitions and then clone partitions, instead you should clone the whole drive (at least from the very head end to slightly behind the partitions that you want, in your case the partitions containing Windows but it might be difficult to repair the truncated partition table.) Then you can increase the size of the Windows partition and check that it still works. After that you can install your favourite Linux distro in the remaining drive space. See also my answer in your previous thread. – sudodus Oct 09 '23 at 10:15
  • I'm using a laptop - not a desktop that can install more than one hard drive - only one drive accessible at a time - how do I 'clone' when only one drive can be accessed? – The MAJOR Oct 09 '23 at 11:49
  • should I just take both drives somewhere and have them clone my old one to the new one, then dump partitions past sda2 w/win7, use gparted to expand sda2, then add sda3, etc behind it and restore my lzop images to those partitions? – The MAJOR Oct 09 '23 at 12:08
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    looking at StarTech.com SATA to USB Cable - USB 3.0 to 2.5” SATA III Hard Drive Adapter - External Converter for SSD/HDD Data Transfer (USB3S2SAT3CB) from Amazon... Should this be able to do this clonezilla method? – The MAJOR Oct 09 '23 at 12:57
  • Yes, it is possible via a SATA to USB adapter cable to use Clonezilla. I do that. An alternative is to create an image (compressed image) and extract from it, but you can also clone directly from one drive to another. Clonezilla can also create an image in an SSH server (via a local network). I do that too. – sudodus Oct 09 '23 at 18:38
  • Burned clonezilla to a CD, booted it up to do a 'test' clone image to usb thumb drive, and found it VERY confusing - unsure if it was trying to clone my hard drive to the usb drive, or clone my usb drive to my hard drive - scary!

    SO, looked at my G4L (Ghost for Linux) and saw it has 'Click'n Clone' feature that was much more easily understood and trustworthy / safe - will use it instead when my SATA to USB adapter gets here Sat.!

     – The MAJOR Oct 10 '23 at 13:28
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    Yes, it is best to use a tool that you know already (when it can do what you want). Good luck :-) – sudodus Oct 10 '23 at 20:02

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Got the SATA to USB adapter today - plugged my laptop's new hard drive into it. Used G4L's Click'n Clone to clone my laptop's old internal hard drive to it. Next, used Ununtu 20.04lts disc to boot and run gparted - deleted all partitions past the win7 sda2 partition, then resized sda2 from 30Gb to 100Gb. Then made the other partitions (50Gb for Edrive sda3, 100Gb for Ubuntu sda5, 120Gb for future linux sad6 - maybe Fedora or MX, and the remaining 75Gb for maybe another win partition in future sda7). Rebooted to G4L and dumped my lzop backups for Edrive (data) and Ubuntu 20.04lts. Back to gparted to fix (check) the restored backup to use the whole new partition size. Finally put the new hard drive in replacing the old one - and win7 glitched and had to use 'last known good config' to get it back and works good now... Ubuntu came up w/o issue - happy camper!!!

The MAJOR
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