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Safe way to boot test a clone of my internal drive?

in flag
Tom Childers

I’m on Ubuntu 21.04 on my laptop (MSI Bravo 15 Ryzen 7 4800H 15.6" 16GB A4DDR-212IN with 2 internal nvme drive slots).

I’m regularly using Clonezilla to clone my main internal drive to an external USB connected nvme drive. I want to test boot from this external drive to make sure the clone is working good but somewhere I read to never plug in and try to boot from an external clone drive cuz that could mess up the main internal drive.

Is there a software way to disable/disconnect the main internal drive so I can safely boot from and test the external clone drive? I know I can open my laptop and physically remove the internal drive, but it sure would be easier if I could run some command to disable/disconnect the main internal drive.

Even though I’m a newbie I can see that in order to do this I’d have to boot from something like Magic Parted on a USB stick. And then run the hypothetical (mythical?) “disconnect/disable” command from the live Magic Parted instance.

Any way to do this? Thanks.

PS: I just had a thought. Is it possible to unmount the main internal drive from within Magic Parted? Then try the external drive boot test? Then get back in to Magic Parted and re-mount the internal drive? (UPDATE: I was told this won't work cuz the internal nvme drives get re-mounted as soon as the power comes on.)

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guiverc avatar
cn flag
guiverc
Disabling a drive is specific to your hardware/firmware. Some boxes allow easy disabling, others don't, but as we don't know your device; we cannot know what will work for you. It's not a Ubuntu question (as I see it), but a *device* firmware question.
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sudodus avatar
jp flag
sudodus
For the reasons described by @guiverc, I can only recommend unplugging the internal drive. That way you can be 100% sure that it will be disabled.
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oldfred avatar
cn flag
oldfred
The issue on external drives is installing to them. Ubuntu's Ubiquity installer only installs grub to first drive's ESP or usually internal drive. And it does not then create ESP on external drive so external drive cannot be booted from any other system. Other distributions allow choice of where to install grub & they work. UEFI external systems only boot from external drive's ESP ( if not on internal drive) and a drive entry (not ubuntu) using /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi just like a live installer.
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in flag
Tom Childers
@guiverc I edited my question to give the laptop details. Does this help resolve the issue? Should I post this question on another forum?
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in flag
Tom Childers
@guiverc I went ahead and posted this q on r/MSIlaptops. Should I delete my question here?
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guiverc avatar
cn flag
guiverc
I assume r/MSIlaptops is reddit; and as I understand it, StackExchange policy is questions on other non-SE-sites are not a breach of rules (*double posting on Stack Exchange however is*). This is also a Q&A site & not a Forum (https://ubuntuforums.org/ is the Ubuntu Forums). Changes made in software will be lost on reboot (unless they overwrite *firmware* which you do **NOT** want to happen so it's not a software issue as I already stated; so it won't be a proper test; you can only 'boot' it as a virtual machine which is only a partial test)
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in flag
Tom Childers
@guiverc Thanks. Looks like I'll have to open the laptop and remove the source drive for a real test of the clone drive. Luckily, the internal drives are easily accessible. How to mark this as resolved?
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