Can I just use dd to clone my laptop to a bootable USB stick? - eviltoast

I know about Clonezilla and copy pasting partitions with gparted, but can I just use dd to copy a partition with batocera to a USB stick and will it then boot from the stick? Do I have to set the boot flag or take any other steps?

Thank you for any tips.

  • Deckweiss@lemmy.world
    10·
    9 months ago

    huh?

    Isn’t it the other way around?

    I once cloned an nvme with dd and had to physically remove one of the two, because they had the same id and the bios couldn’t differentiate between them and would randomly boot into either the first or the second one, inconsistently.

    And removing either one would boot into an identical system with everything mounted and working. Which caused some confusion until I realized that the id was copied over.

    So unless you didn’t use the id in fstab, you should be fine. Sure the device path may differ, but that can happen anyway to usually devices should be referenced by id.

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
      6·
      9 months ago

      There are different schemes that different distros use. Some user partition id, some use fire system id, and some use device serial number and partition index.