Re: [gentoo-user] Guidance on using Gentoo to clone a Win 10 system drive

[Mark Knecht]

Michael,
   I got Win 10 Pro installed via the M$ tool that creates USB install
devices. It worked fine. Reading online it seems that if M$ sees the new
disk as still the same 'hardware' then it's supposed to automatically
validate and I'd be good to go. so far, after 2 hours it hasn't done that
but I'll give it awhile and see what happens. As it only took an hour I
might still try the disk copy path and see if that comes up validated as
that would also transfer the couple of applications I have on the original
hard drive.

   Anyway, thanks for the ideas.

Cheers,
Mark

On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 3:01 PM Michael Jones <gentoo@×××××××.com> wrote:

> You can use the Windows 10 Download Tool (Or similarly named thing, sorry,
> I can't find the details of it at this time) to download an ISO image
>
> Combine that with the rufus program https://rufus.ie/ (I use the portable
> one, personally) to create a Windows 10 USB installer stick.
>
> On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 2:39 PM Mark Knecht <markknecht@×××××.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Michael,
>>    Thanks for the response. Great info.
>>
>>    The install Win 10 clean sounds wonderful if it works. With no DVD in
>> this machine it sounds like I should investigate an install from USB if the
>> machine supports it. It's an Asus gaming laptop circa 2008 so hopefully
>> that works but I've never done it on this machine.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Mark
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 12:56 PM Michael Jones <gentoo@×××××××.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Generally the way I've handled this situation in the past is like so
>>> (this is written from memory, so expect gratuitous problems).
>>>
>>> On the machine with the drive attached
>>> mbuffer -i /dev/mydrive | xz -e -9 | mbuffer -O hostname:port
>>>
>>> On a machine with storage space
>>> mbuffer -I port -o /path/to/storage.xz
>>>
>>> To make a backup.
>>>
>>>
>>> In terms of cloning windows to another harddrive in general, as long as
>>> the destination harddrive is large enough to fit the original drive without
>>> issues, simply running:
>>>
>>> dd if=/dev/original of=/dev/destination
>>> (I prefer dcfldd, personally)
>>>
>>> Is enough. Run gparted (the graphical version, for nice wizards) after,
>>> and it'll fixup your partition table for you to match the new size, and you
>>> can re-size any partitions you have to make them match as well. I do
>>> exactly this all the time and have yet to have a problem.
>>>
>>> As for windows 10 licensing, don't trust me on this blindly, but your
>>> license should be tied to the hardware fingerprint of the laptop. So even
>>> installing windows fresh on your new SSD should result in Windows
>>> activating automatically. In fact, you might want to take this opportunity
>>> to try that out, to get a completely fresh installation without the decade
>>> of old cruft built up by window's lack of a package manager.
>>>
>>> If it doesn't activate as soon as you plug in an ethernet cable, you can
>>> just wipe your SSD and copy your old installation as discussed already.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 1:11 PM Mark Knecht <markknecht@×××××.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>    I haven't been here in a couple of years. IT's great to see some
>>>> familiar names posting. Cheers to all.
>>>>
>>>>    I have a laptop running Win 10 with no (working) DVD/CDROM. For
>>>> various reasons I want to move from a 10 year old laptop drive to a new SSD
>>>> and am looking for guidance on I might do that. Win 10 is properly licensed
>>>> but through a weird channel - it was Win 7 that M$ allowed to convert to
>>>> Win 10 for free and I'm nervous that if the hard drive died I'd have to
>>>> purchase a new license as the free conversion path likely doesn't exist
>>>> anymore.
>>>>
>>>>    Both drives are nominally 500GB.
>>>>
>>>>    The older hard drive fdisk info shows:
>>>>
>>>> root@science:~# fdisk --list /dev/sde
>>>> Disk /dev/sde: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
>>>> Disk model: ASM1053E
>>>> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
>>>> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
>>>> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
>>>> Disklabel type: dos
>>>> Disk identifier: 0xe0c5913d
>>>>
>>>> Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
>>>> /dev/sde1              63  45062324  45062262  21.5G 1c Hidden W95
>>>> FAT32 (LBA)
>>>> /dev/sde2  *     45062325 288063133 243000809 115.9G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
>>>> /dev/sde3       288063488 289247231   1183744   578M 27 Hidden NTFS
>>>> WinRE
>>>> /dev/sde4       289249254 976768064 687518811 327.9G fd Linux raid
>>>> autodetect
>>>> root@science:~#
>>>>
>>>> The Linux RAID autodetect is from running Gentoo at some earlier time
>>>> and probably doesn't need to be copied. I'm not at all sure what /dev/sde3
>>>> is or whether it's required to make M$ happy.
>>>>
>>>>    The new SSD is unused and shows:
>>>>
>>>> root@science:~# fdisk --list /dev/sdf
>>>> Disk /dev/sdf: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
>>>> Disk model: ASM1053E
>>>> Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
>>>> Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
>>>> I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
>>>> root@science:~#
>>>>
>>>>    The appear to have the same sector count and overall size.
>>>>
>>>>    I can make a 1TB drive available in my big machine and work over USB
>>>> (which is what I'm doing to get the info above) but I'm unclear how much of
>>>> this can be done automatically and how much I might need to do by hand.
>>>>
>>>>    As long as I don't hurt the old drive I can put data on the SSD
>>>> multiple times to get through the process in case I have trouble.
>>>>
>>>>    Does anyone have experience with this sort of issue and can you
>>>> point me toward some instructions I might try?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Mark
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>