I have a 20 GB Linux drive that begins to boot up and then locks up with "Kernel Panic: NO init found message. The drive passes every hardware test I run on it, I suspect corrupt files / software. It has valuable Apps on it I can't lose. I tried Clonezilla to do "local partition to local partition" on sda1 and sda2 from a working 80 GB drive in an attempt to overwrite the Linux and revive the 20GB drive. After the cloning attempt, it won't boot at all, I just get 6 beeps from the PC.I am very new to Linux but in using Clonezilla in the past, I recall it asking if I wanted to transfer the MBR to make the cloned drive bootable. I saw nothing like that this time. I'm not even sure my plan is valid. By the way, I'm working on a complete clone of the actual bad drive. It fails at the same point the real problem drive does. When I find a "fix" for the clone, I'll use it on the real one. Thoughts ? Questions ?

Thanks in advance

What kernel is lying in the partition? which distro it seeks to run? are you using an initrd.gz ? What boot loader are you using and how is it configured?

Probably because, as you stated, you were backing up partition by partition, not the entire hard drive. The MBR is not contained in the partition but at the head of the hard disk to contain the general map of partitions.

If you have saved a copy of the original MBR it is good to restore that. However, if none, still you can manage to repair the MBR there are linux repair CDs that can read the geometry of the hard drive and write the map into the MBR, try one, download from here burn and use.

Good luck.