Migrate Linux/win10 dual boot from MBR nvme drive to a new GPT nvme drive
 

Hello. I am attempting to migrate my current dual boot (opensuse/win10) setup from one nvme(nvme1) drive to a bigger & faster drive (nvme0). I'd like to utilize ~100gb for the opensuse root (/) and ~400gb for windows on nvme0. I mount /home to a separate ssd and will move that to nvme1 after the migration. I'd also like to keep grub2 and other boot information on nvme1 since I heard windows10 updates might overwrite the boot record.

nvme1 uses MBR, and I am interested in using GPT on nvme0 due to faster bootup/shutdown times.

fdisk -l for nvme1
I've tried cloning nvme1 -> nvme0 using clonezilla, however that appears to preserve the MBR partition table. Cloning partition->partition was giving me 'drive full' errors, even though the target was much larger than the source.

I also tried creating partitions using gparted on nvme0 and I'm not sure if I was successful, because I see the following via fdisk -l even though I created an ext4 file system on /dev/nvme0n1p1:

I just don't know where to really go to proceed, does anybody have any guidance on what steps I should take? I'd prefer not to reinstall either OS if I didn't have to.

Thank you!

I'm not sure if this will help, lsblk and blkid:
FWIW, sdb and sdc are clonezilla and system rescue cd, respectively.

Where did you get the idea that there could be a difference in times according to whether MBR or GPT is used? The bus, media and filesystem selection determine I/O speed, not the partitioning type. I do partition to partition cloning routinely. It's part of my backup/restore system. P2P works well once the tools' ropes are understood.

Indeed.
Not the only strange thing - why have you allocated the new nmvme partitions as type EFI ?. I don't see an EFI on the old SSDs, which (to me) implies a BIOS based system. If you go gpt, you'll need a BIOS_boot partition. And that's just for grub - I have no idea what Windows will do when the architecture of the disk changes like that. I always just re-install when I have to change a Win disk - path of least resistance.

Stick with MBR (aka dos-mode) partitioning to save yourself the grief - there is likely no advantage to gpt with such small disks. I'm not a fan of imaging systems, but should work ok.

If you want windows on a GPT disk, it must be EFI or it will fail. With Linux, you can create a BIOS boot partition as suggested above and then use GPT. It will be a lot easier to just stick with MBR partitioning as suggested if you do not want to reinstall.

I think I got that idea by watching this video from MS about their mbr2gpt utility, though looking at it again it seems they were talking about uefi vs bios.

That was my failed attempt at creating a partition structure with gparted.

Given the feedback here, I'm not going to mess with GPT for now as my drives are <2tb. What steps are recommended at this point? Clonezilla device-to-device from nvme1->nvme0?

As I said, I gave up attempting to clone Win systems years ago. Unless the partition structure is the same (boot/system, physical order) it always seemed to bitch and moan - in one case I had to ring M$osft and get the system re-activated because I had "changed disk too often". And that took hours.
Idiotic arrangement.

You state clonezilla wouldn't work partition-to-partition, but in theory that should be a good way to go. I also haven't bothered with it in years, so can't comment on current state of the tool. gparted apparently allows you to "copy-and-paste" partitions, so that might be quickest for the Linux partitions. Personally I just allocate partitions then rsync and cleanup things like bootloader and fstab later.

I decided to reinstall windows after fudging around with trying to get it to boot on the new drive with no success. Definitely a lesson learned.