I hate asking what are often dumb questions to knowledgeable people in here. I hate AI, I distrust AI, but I am aware that it’s faster than Googling (and is basically no different, just faster). I want a bootable clone of my machine. I use PIka, but I want something bootabnle and also a full clone…

Right, this is like the situation I had when I replaced my laptop’s SATA SSD with an NVMe SSD . I cloned everything across, but booting took me into emergency mode, and I had to regenerate the initramfs (sudo dracut regenerate --all -f) to boot successfully. Others will know more about the details, …

Thanks. I am really not very technical so much of this (your thread for example) is very hard for me to understand. This is one of those ‘I wish I was still on a Mac’ things! I do NOT wish that, but at times like these I do, as stuff is designed for people without terminal/code knowledge. Also I am…

[image] Joey Dell D5420 F42WSGnome: The thing is, I want to TEST that it is indeed bootable and cloned properly. Not by replacing the internal drive, without doing that. I understand that, but without some additional steps, it won’t work. Your internal drive (I’m assuming it’s NVMe) has an i…

[image] P G: Your internal drive (I’m assuming it’s NVMe) has an installation of Fedora, which is bootable from an NVMe drive, but only from an NVMe drive. Maybe configure dracut to add in more disk drivers?

thanks. “You’ve done a perfect bit-by-bit clone of that drive to a USB drive” - Yes, but just to make sure we are on the same page, not USB stick, a Toshiba USB HDD. I am sure you know that but just in case! I have a clonezilla USB stick, live boot, to perform the backup. Which leads me to anothe…

My understanding (from ChatGPT) was that it isn’t about ‘drivers’, it is apparently about the security/firmware/BIOS on the Dell 5420 which ‘refuses’ to boot from any other device than the internal NVMe SSD. That may be wrong, but just saying, so you can correct me if that’s wrong!

[image] Joey Dell D5420 F42WSGnome: but just to make sure we are on the same page, not USB stick, a Toshiba USB HDD. Yes, got it - I assumed not a stick, but wasn’t sure if it was HDD or SSD (not that it makes a difference here) so avoided using a more specific term. [image] Joey Dell D54…

Folks, If this is a true “binary Image” of the original drive’s data … then the UUID of the backup dirve’s partitions will be the same as the original drive … you are going to have a real time of it if you try to boot and use the drive while the original is still in the machine … In this case you …

That’s out of my knowledge scope sadly. All I know is I was told (not necessarily correctly although I thought so) that CloneZilla can replicate Carbon Copy Cloner which I used for a decade or more on Mac. To produce a ‘Bootable like for like clone of my internal drive’. It now seems I ‘probably’ …

There is also the option of buying an NVMe and an appropriate enclosure with USB connection, and clone the internal disk to the external NVMe. The verification would then involve swapping the internal (old) drive with the new one. I’m not sure the purchase is well worth it though.

CloneZilla advice needed please

Ask Fedora

pg-tips (P G) March 3, 2026, 10:08am 18

Right, but if the original system didn’t have an NVMe drive, and you clone to a new NVMe drive, then you likely won’t be able to boot without regenerating the initramfs, because by default Fedora doesn’t include NVMe drivers in the initramfs if there is no NVME drive present at install time.

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CloneZilla advice needed please

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