Cloning Linux and Windows Dual Operating Systems With Acronis

Acronis Cloning Errors

Using Acronis True Image is a great way to backup computers for web developers and programmers. Since these types of users often have multiple partitions, specific software for specific systems and perhaps many Virtual machines running on various operating systems, having a good cloning tool can make it easy to avoid the hassle of starting from scratch if s hard drive fails.

Thanks to Acronis True Image, it does have a nice feature to clone a complete disk using its clone tool. In order for this to happen, you need to have a PC with two hard drives; such as a laptop with two hard drive bays.

Although Acronis works very smoothly with Windows and will clone all partitions, including Linux, it can have its hickups when you clone systems other than Windows. But, it can be done. This tutorial will guide you through common problems and how to fix them.

After a cloning operation has completed successfully, Windows or Linux could have booting errors; especially if GRUB is fired up upon boot.

Recently, after cloning a hard drive with Linux and Windows, Linux failed to boot and Windows booted but had an annoying error.

To solve these problems, I had to match the proper UUIDs to each machine. With Linux, things are done a certain way and with Windows setting the UUID was different.

Essentially, with Windows, the UUID was updated by changing the UUID in GRUB, while Linux has a simpler commands which fixed the same problem.

This tutorial will explain how those fixes in detail.

LINUX

When I tried to boot into Linux, I received the error ALERT! /dev/disk/uuid/5467d38a-3517-4b79-9efa-8a4973852mom does not exist.

After that, I booted an Ubuntu Live USB and ran the blkid command to get all partition UUIDS.

From that list, Windows was the nfts while Linux was /dev/sda4.

With Ubuntu Live, mount the desired partition just to make sure the fields are the one you expect for the partition that is not booting.

Now that you are absolutely certain about the UUID and the partition, run the command

Now, if you run the command blkid a second time, you will see it us updated. Now reboot without the Live cd or USB and Linux should work as expected. If not, you can always update /boot/grub/grub.cfg file for the root partition, which in this case is Linux. So, if you mount the partition witrh errors and open the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file, you can change the UUIDs there. Just find the error UUID and replace it with the proper one from the blkid command.

WINDOWS

For Windows NFTS partitions, another story. You could get this error:

Although you can press a key right away and get the Windows Bootloader, it can seize after time and it is always a good idea to fix a problem anyways. If this is the case, you need to edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg Good idea to make a backup first. After that, use the blkid command again to get the ID of the Windows partition. Then, replace it with the erroneous one. Finally, run the command update-grub.

Now, all errors should be gone and you have can boot without any error messages.

November 21, 2014 by kent