I have a Ubuntu 8.4 desktop (ZOTAC) test rig that works OK. The OS was first installed on a 60Gb ATA hard drive and subsequently cloned to a separate 120Gb SATA hard drive using ddrescue running for this purpose from a Ubuntu CDRom. As prescribed in dimitar.me/clone-disk-drives-with-ubuntu . . . ,this required simply
sodu ddrescue -v /dev/sda /dev/sdb
This all worked and the resulting 120Gb drive installed on its own was bootable and fdisk showed that both the 60 and 120 drives had identical EXT3 partitions.
Next, I installed a 60Gb SSD (Microcenter G2 series) as a copy destination (/dev/sdc) in the same way as I had used the 120GB drive. Then I wrote a partition on the SSD with
cfdisk -z /dev/sdc followed by W and, as before,
sodu ddrescue -v /dev/sda /dev/sdc
This all worked and fdisk showed that the SSD had the expected cloned partitions. But the SSD would not boot and moreover would not mount because mount stated that the drive did not recognize the EXT3 partition parameter nor any other partition type. Please note that I am not trying for efficient use of the SSD by manipulating partition boundaries and block sizes; I just want it to accept a clone write like a hard drive does. Help.

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There is no point in first making a partition and then writing over the partition table, like you do. So I don't think that this really is a partitioning issue.
Please post the output ofwhen the SSD is attached to your system.

see attached jan11.txt

Attached Files

jan11.txt (1.3 KB, 4 views)

The output of your fdisk -l looks fine, of course I would set the boot flag on only one of the disks, if all three are in the machine. To help you we need more info. What exactly do you mean with "won't boot" (any error messages?), and what exactly are your commands and error-messages (please cut and paste into code-tags) you get when you try to mount the partition on the SSD?

Thanks so far. I tried to boot with only the SSD in the system (both hard drives physically disconnected). GRUB gives the msg: Error 21: Selected disk does not exist. But the bios seems to recognize the SSD correctly ("SSD G2 series 64GB") and the GRUB boot code shows
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-28-generic root=UUID=16fb47be-68f1-4964- [and so on]
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-28-generic

Moreover, the above is the correct device UUID and Gparted on the SSD shows an ext3 partition flagged as boot .
With the system running on the original 60 GB HD and with the 120 and the SSD installed as /dev/sdb and /dev/sdc (but not mounted), I can mount sdb but mount /dev/sdc -t ext3 /mnt gives the msg "wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock . . .
or other error. By the way, I am writing this on a separate machine from the one with the SSD problem, so the above code is copied manually from the Ubuntu machine.
So what now?

Running with only the SSD installed, I tried the boot menu "Recovery Mode". After some screen churning I get "Recovery Menu". Selecting "resume normal boot" (the first menu option) works successfully and the machine seems to run perfectly, in fact faster than with the HD, as it should with an SSD. A restart, however, leads to the same boot failure. The other recovery menu items, "repair broken packages" etc, are not successful. So now I have it working but don't know why. Gparted shows the expected partitions on the SSD, with about 20GB inherited from the original HD installation and 37GB unallocated. Returning to the original HD system with the SSD installed but not mounted as SDB I tried fsck /dev/sdb and got the msg: "The superblock could not be read or does not described a correct ext2 file system . . . try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock . . . e2fsck -b 8193 <device>".
What now?

The code root (hd1,0) is not correct, if only one disk is in your system. It should be root (hd0,0).
And also you should try to mount /dev/sdc1 and not /dev/sdc.

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