Sun, 21 Jan 2024 12:30:58 +0900 Masaru Nomiya <nomiya@lake.dti.ne.jp> :
[BTF] == "Ben T. Fender" <slowroller@trixtar.org> has written:
BTF> I got me a used Lenovo T470 with w10 preinstalled and using uefi or BTF> whatecver they call that fancy boot crap.
BTF> In order to stay on the safe side of the alley I just installed BTF> Tumbleweed on a 1tb usb-ssd prepartitioned the same as the 1tb ssd of my BTF> desktop to eventually just host a copy of it. This way I can make a BTF> 'dd' copy of the entire laptop ssd for a backup of the entire BTF> on-board built-in hsithouse with windows included. I 'think' in case BTF> of a mishap I would just dd that file back to that or another same BTF> size ssd and be done with it.
BTF> 3 questions
BTF> - is the above a workable arrangement?
If you are asking if it is possible to backup and restore ssd with Windows and Tumbleweed using the dd command, the answer is "yes".
That's the good part. The rest.. I ran into some problems. First I installed TW on a sata ssd using a usb adapter and the same partitioning scheme as for my desktop, then I stuck all my fingers up my stack all the way to my armpit; I don't know what I did but it cost me many hours to recover and it wasn't even surgery. But all is well now, all back to normal, I'm starting the T470 rodeo almost from scratch. I made a dd copy of my entire 1tb identical ssd. Either ssd boots with grub any one of my 7 Linux systems on my desktop, the two ssd's are identical, there are no problems. When I plug the one of the ssd's into a T470 usb port and start the alternate boot method both the on-board 256gb pci-ssd and my external 1tb e860 plugged into the usb port via a usb adapter show up in the alternate booting menu. ATA HDD0: SK hynix SC311 SATA 256GB USB HDD: Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB But... selecting MY ssd doesn't load the grub menu from it, it does nothing but relight the laptop's alternate boot menu above. For what it may be worth the disc partitioning is as follows: # fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 931.51 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors Disk model: Samsung SSD 860 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: gpt Disk identifier: 2CB71AC7-D2DB-4B81-A559-02802643D197 Device Start End Sectors Size Type /dev/sda1 2048 2099199 2097152 1G EFI System /dev/sda2 2099200 4196351 2097152 1G BIOS boot /dev/sda3 4196352 16779263 12582912 6G Linux swap /dev/sda4 16779264 226494463 209715200 100G Linux filesystem /dev/sda5 226494464 436209663 209715200 100G Linux filesystem /dev/sda6 436209664 645924863 209715200 100G Linux filesystem /dev/sda7 645924864 855640063 209715200 100G Linux filesystem /dev/sda8 855640064 1065355263 209715200 100G Linux filesystem /dev/sda9 1065355264 1275070463 209715200 100G Linux filesystem /dev/sda10 1275070464 1484785663 209715200 100G Linux filesystem /dev/sda11 1484785664 1694500863 209715200 100G Linux filesystem /dev/sda12 1694500864 1946159103 251658240 120G Linux filesystem The EFI partition is there for future use but is inactive. I wonder if it's mere existance is in the way and tricks the T470 into expecting to find a boot menu there?