Imaging an SSD

[Tom Elliott]

You will likely need to change the SATA Operation mode from Raid on to AHCI.

To do the switch safely follow the last post on this page: https://www.dell.com/community/Inspiron/Switched-SATA-settings-from-RAID-to-AHCI-broke-computer/m-p/6228180/highlight/true#M42298

Essential Steps:

Boot machine, open msconfig.exe and turn on safe boot.

Shutdown machine.

Power on and go into BIOS

Switch SATA operation mode from Raid On to AHCI

Reboot machine and let boot into windows.

Open msconfig and turn off safe mode.

Shutdown machine (or reboot)

Capture image.

On other machines, all you will need to do is change SATA operation mode.

[agray]

@Tom-Elliott I can re-enable this after the image is deployed right?

[Tom Elliott]

@agray Re-enable what?

Just leave it on AHCI mode. You have to make the change to all machines anyway, so why would you do:

1. Change SATA operation mode to AHCI
2. Image Machine
3. Change SATA operation mode back to RAID On

This adds another step that essentially is unneeded.

[agray]

@Tom-Elliott I already have an Image captured, just need to deploy it.
After what you gave me below, Fog was able to register it but, when I try deploying an image to it, it’s spitting out “Error trying to restore GPT partition tables (restorePartitionTablesAndBoodLoaders)”

[Sebastian Roth]

@agray said in Imaging an SSD:

it’s spitting out “Error trying to restore GPT partition tables (restorePartitionTablesAndBoodLoaders)”

Is your image resizable? What’s the size of the source disk and the destination disk?

new Dell Latitude 3500

Well, new computer might need an updated version of FOG at some point as well. While Tom was right with AHCI mode there is also a chance you hit more issues with the old version you have. We won’t be able to backport any fixes that might be needed.

[agray]

@Sebastian-Roth said in Imaging an SSD:

What’s the size of the source disk and the destination disk?

The Image I’m pushing is set to “Single Disk - Realizable”
The original HDD I cloned was 500 GB, if that is what you mean, while the new SSD is 256 GB.

Well, new computer might need an updated version of FOG at some point as well.

If I need to update it, I can but not in time for this project. If that is my only option, no worries, I can take the long way to getting everything there.

[Sebastian Roth]

@agray said in Imaging an SSD:

The Image I’m pushing is set to “Single Disk - Realizable”

Ok, can you please post the contents of the text files d1.partitions, d1.minimum.partitions and d1.fixed_size_partitions here. You find those in the /images/#IMAGENAME#/ directory on your FOG server. Pest if you post as text not as picture.

As well run ls -al /var/www/html/fog/services/ipxe/init* and post output here.

[agray]

@Sebastian-Roth
d1.fixed_size_partitions

:1:2

d1.minium.partitions

label: gpt
label-id: B300B49B-4800-44BC-BB1D-E29EB16E9E42
device: /dev/sda
unit: sectors
first-lba: 34
last-lba: 976773134

/dev/sda1 : start=        2048, size=     1331200, type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, uuid=CE1A4E76-07A7-4004-A685-5589FD1A52CD, name="EFI system partition", attrs="GUID:63"
/dev/sda2 : start=     1333248, size=      262144, type=E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE, uuid=A20895A8-3AF1-499D-95BB-F89DA7202209, name="Microsoft reserved partition", attrs="GUID:63"
/dev/sda3 : start=     1595392, size=    68078446, type=EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7, uuid=15D7FC86-0674-4911-82C4-8122C656078F, name="Basic data partition"
/dev/sda4 : start=   939324416, size=      965312, type=DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC, uuid=34031986-6A02-42DB-8AFC-0B510AF755BA, name="attrs=\x22RequiredPartition GUID:63"
/dev/sda5 : start=   952557056, size=     1763454, type=DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC, uuid=8B928276-CF41-42FC-BFC9-9B5097DE653A, name="attrs=\x22RequiredPartition GUID:63"

d1.partitions

label: gpt
label-id: B300B49B-4800-44BC-BB1D-E29EB16E9E42
device: /dev/sda
unit: sectors
first-lba: 34
last-lba: 976773134

/dev/sda1 : start=        2048, size=     1331200, type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, uuid=CE1A4E76-07A7-4004-A685-5589FD1A52CD, name="EFI system partition", attrs="GUID:63"
/dev/sda2 : start=     1333248, size=      262144, type=E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE, uuid=A20895A8-3AF1-499D-95BB-F89DA7202209, name="Microsoft reserved partition", attrs="GUID:63"
/dev/sda3 : start=     1595392, size=   937729024, type=EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7, uuid=15D7FC86-0674-4911-82C4-8122C656078F, name="Basic data partition"
/dev/sda4 : start=   939324416, size=    13232640, type=DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC, uuid=34031986-6A02-42DB-8AFC-0B510AF755BA, name="attrs=\x22RequiredPartition GUID:63"
/dev/sda5 : start=   952557056, size=    24201216, type=DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC, uuid=8B928276-CF41-42FC-BFC9-9B5097DE653A, name="attrs=\x22RequiredPartition GUID:63"

As well run ls -al /var/www/html/fog/services/ipxe/init* and post output here.

Says no such file or directory

[Sebastian Roth]

@agray Are you aware of having 5 partitions on that drive? What do you need partition 4 and 5 for? Looks a bit like recovery partitions. Those two prevent FOG from shrinking your partition to fit on the new smaller size drive.

[agray]

@Sebastian-Roth I was not! Not sure how it got that way but will fix that.
Is that was seem to be keeping it from getting to the needed size and spitting out that error?

[Sebastian Roth]

@agray Take a look at the numbers. sda5 starts at block 952557056. Multiplied by 512 byte block size this is roughly 454 GB. For sda4 it’s 448 GB as starting point. So if those two partitions exist you cannot deploy the image to a disk smaller than ~ 455 GB without moving the starting point of the partitions.

While FOG should be able to move those partitions forward as they are not marked as fixed size there can be two issues preventing from that:

1. The inits used have a bug (I just tested your partition layout with current inits and it looks fine from what I see - can move sda4/sda5 and shrink to a 256 GB disk).
2. The master boot record stored in d1.mbr has wrong numbers - we have seen this reported to the forums at least twice and we still don’t know how this was caused - possibly when converting the disk layout from MBR to GPT.

Either way, I think the quick fix for you will be to just drop sda4 and sda5 and recapture the image.

If you run into issues with that you might take a picture of the error on screen and post here. Quite often there is more information on the error screen than you might expect.

[agray]

@Sebastian-Roth When we get our next batch of new PCs in, I’ll see if that fixes it and respond here. Thank you!

[Sebastian Roth]

@agray said in Imaging an SSD:

When we get our next batch of new PCs in, I’ll see if that fixes it and respond here. Thank you!

Do those have 500 GB drives?