I'm pretty lost here and would like some pointers. I have an SSD (let's call it /dev/sdc) with both Windows 10 and Fedora 32 installed. Windows was not bootable since I installed Fedora because I guess it overwrote the MBR or something idk. So I decided to get another SSD (let's call it /dev/sda) to move the Fedora partition to.

I used clonezilla to copy the partition to sda, but I was not able to boot from the Fedora partition on sda (the new drive). So, I used clonezilla to clone the entire drive. I thought that would give me two identical drives, but the actual results surprised me:

• I could boot Windows 10 again. I guess clonezilla somehow fixed the Windows boot manager. It only seems to boot from sda, the new drive.
• Now when I boot Fedora, it seems to randomly choose one of the Fedora partitions to boot from. So for example when I run the command `mount | grep " / "`, it sometimes shows sda, and sometimes sdc.

I suspect the second problem has to do with the guid of the partitions being the same since they're presumably an exact copy of one another. I'm not really sure how that works though.

Also, it's worth noting that I don't think the Fedora partition uses UEFI to boot:

Ideally the setup would be a UEFI partition on each drive, sda for Fedora, sdc for Windows. But I'm not sure how I can do that. I don't even what it looks like now since I don't know how to read the MBR or UEFI partitions and see what's inside them.

Thanks for your help!

Unless you plan on moving one of the drives to another system, having more than one efi partition is asking for headaches, it is best to only have one efi partition on the first drive.

Not good to have partitions/drives with same guid lsblk will confirm that one. I think gdisk can be used to change uuids on gpt drive.

That indicates that fedora is booting in legacy mode. Another sign is in legacy mode /sys/firmware/efi doesn't exist. It's not good to mix efi and legacy booting, grub won't chainload between a legacy install and an uefi install. The good news is Fedora can be made to boot in efi mode without reinstalling.

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well its complicated to me as well.

the basics of booting was that the PC booted up using bios firmware;512 bytes on the MBR via bios held just enough data to point to another location with grub. So MBR became stage 1 of grub and then that pointed to stage two grub where there was menu.lst and other configuration files in eg /boot/grub/

The system the way it worked had restrictions 4 primary partitions and then logical



Then secure boot came along associated with gpt , efi and using uefi firmware. I'm on slackware i have "secure boot" disabled but it still uses uefi , a 100mb EFI partition and associated elilo.efi at :


/boot/efi/EFI/Slackware/

My understanding is that you should have a gpt label system on your HD to use uefi; with grub2 and the gpt system you are not restricted to 4 primary partitions.

Basically i think .. if you left windows and fedora on one hd ; then just went head with installing of say a Debian derivative then if you selected options gpt , you should in theory end up with that install
using uefi and grub2 would be clever enough maybe with update-grub to update.

Before doing anything really you should confirm whether your PC is 32 bit or 64; if you said its Windows10 i could guess it would be 64 bit and whetheryour system support mbr or uefi.

So if you just were starting with the Windows you could poke around in system and it would tell you.

I found https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/grub.html a good starting place.

i'm sure serious techno's will come along and clarify by loose introduction

Was this machine bought new with Win10 on it, or did you upgrade from say Win7 ?.
Go here, download the script and run it from a Fedora terminal. Post the output file. That should have all we need.

Can you also check the UEFI (aka BIOS) screens to see what mode you are running in - UEFI or legacy/CSM.

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UUIDs were invented to minimize problems with device identification. When you make a true clone, you've defeated that function, presenting the kernel with two distinct devices per unique UUID, a situation it's not designed to cope with.

The solution is to generate new UUIDs immediately after making any true clone. I do a lot of cloning. The method I use to change filesystem UUIDs is described here (using tune2fs).

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@elmehalawi, I dual boot win 10 & OpenSUSE and have used it both with Legacy grub and EFI.
My bootloader always broke after a major windows version update when I used legacy grub. I didnt try to troubleshoot it (I hate troubleshooting windows' antics) and ever since moving to EFI in 2018, it has survived multiple OS upgrades (Win/Lin), an OS migration (Leap 15 -> Leap 15.1) and Hardware replacements (CPU/MoBo).

My windows OS drive (AKA C drive) and Linux Root partition lies on the SSD. I have a separate partition for EFI boot which has not failed me yet. Data and Home partitions and a Windows Partition (E Drive) resides on the HDD.

Is there any specific reason why you do not want to use EFI boot ?

I'll share my Disk partition table if you think it'll help you make a decision.

Also, I personally prefer file level restoration over cloning because it is a lot simpler that way, but to each their own.

Thank you very much everyone who responded. What I did in the end was re-install fedora, and copy my home folder into the new install (on another partition to make future updates easier). I couldn't figure out how to switch my fedora install from legacy boot to uefi. So I just made sure to use the uefi boot option when booting the installer.

Grub auto-detected the windows partition so now I get a boot menu where I can choose between fedora and windows. I guess the moral is always use uefi.