I have a dying MBR-based 1tb drive with 4 partitions (system recovery, Windows, some unknown one and a 2mb spare) that I want to move to a new 2tb drive.

How would I pull this off? Would I just do

ddrescue -vv -d -r 3 /dev/sdx /backupfile.img ~/backup.log

and then

ddrescue -vv -f /backupfile.img /dev/sdx ~/restore.log?

?

What would I do next to make sure it will boot on the Windows laptop?

Why not directly disk to disk ?.

As for getting Windows to behave, simply point the BIOS to it - or remove the first (dodgy) disk.

1 members found this post helpful.

Directly is the only way I've ever used ddrescue.

I'd have to have a second enclosure, which I don't want to wait for. And I want an image backup, too. How do I point the bios to it? Bios is supposed to see the partitions right off, correct?

I would make the initial disk image with clonezilla instead of using dd:

https://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live-doc.php

And also restore using clonezilla as well. When setting up the options in clonezilla, just be sure to select the option to copy the bootloader. I've always found clonezilla to be easier to use and much faster that using dd utilities.

Okay, will it work on the resulting dd image file? I've already created the dd image file of that disk and would not want to try to draw data off that dying drive again.

I doubt it but I don't know for sure as I haven't researched it. If you've already imaged the drive with dd, I would continue with dd to write to your new drive. The image that you created should have the included the bootloader and your new drive should boot. Give it a try; you've got nothing to lose. It will either boot or it won't. If not, you may be able to use some windows tool to restore the bootloader. If successful, your windows OS will only see 1TB of your 2TB drive. You can correct that by using a partitioning tool like gparted to enlarge existing partition(s). How you do that will depend on your partition layout and your needs.

If nothing works with your dd image, and you have either a Western Digital or Seagate hard drive as either your old or new drive, both have imaging utilities on their websites for free that can image your drive. These utilities are stripped down versions of Acronis TrueImage which is an excellent imaging application for windows.

BIOS only sees disks, not partitions. With an eSATA connection it might take some BIOS futzing to make seeing the disk happen. I never boot with a USB connected disk, so I'm not sure what to expect the BIOS to find or report, but probably it should be found unless the PC is truly ancient.

If the 2TB happens to be a 2.5" SSD, an "enclosure" isn't required, just a dongle, like this.

It appears that I made some mistake with ddrescue on my first try with imaging my drive. ddrescue created a perfectly functional copy of my failing 4-partition 1tb MBR'd drive onto the 2tb backup on my last attempt.

sudo ddrescue -vv -d -r 3 /dev/sdx laptopwindows.img ~/ddrescue-laptopwindows.log

then

sudo ddrescue -vv -f laptopwindows.img /dev/sdx ~/restorewindows.log

Then gparted to format the remaining 1tb partition and it booted right up in my laptop!

I believe ddrescue probably performs the same as dd in that it copies bit by bit everything from the source to the destination. What you likely ended up with before the gparted step was an exact copy of the original disk, partition sizes, etc. and no access to the remainder of the 2TB drive.

I have seen that same effect many times when using dd to copy the live boot image to a USB stick. An 8GB stick looks like ~2GB because that was the size of the iso.

If you don't want the hassles of recovering the hidden portion of your drives you should use something like clonezilla or equivalent. Those only copy the data and restore the partitions without making the new drive look exactly like the old drive.
Saves a lot of copy time and headaches in repartitioning. I remember using a norton utility that did the same, and when doing the restore you had the option to resize the partitions during the restore.