How to properly clone drive?

Channels DVR Server Raspberry Pi
#1

A couple days ago the HDD attached to my Pi Channels DVR started making a weird clicking sound. It still worked but failure was eminent. So I powered it off and ordered a new drive. When the new drive arrived I connected both to my PC and used Macrium to clone the bad drive to the new one. Then I plugged the new drive into the Pi, powered it up and nothing! The dvr-server.local address doesn’t respond. The Pi isn’t connected to a monitor so I can’t see what it's displaying, but I assume there is an error booting.

My question is… is there a proper way to clone a Pi Channels drive?

I don’t want to start from scratch and lose all my settings, passes, recordings, etc…

#2

Try imaging the new drive with our OS

Then boot it once to the setup screen

Then power off and reconnect to your Mac. It should show the dvr partition. Copy over all the folders from the old drive dvr partition to the new one

Reattach new drive again and select Restore option after boot

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#3

So there is no way to simply clone the drive? I was really trying to avoid having to manually move everything over.

What is special about the drive that prevents a simple clone? If I booted into a linux distro, or used something like gparted, would it work? I just want to do a simple sector by sector to the new drive and boot it up as if it's the original.

#4

There's nothing special afaik. I'm not sure why the clone didn't work for you.

#5

Did you try clonezilla ?

2 Likes
#6

I bought a mini HDMI cable so I can see the boot screen. I'm not a Linux expert but it seems to be having an issue with the USB drive having a different serial number. Is that actually stored somewhere in the boot part of Channels?

I also tried to follow the method in the first reply but my Windows computer wont even read the drive. I can only see the partitions on the drive in special tools like Macrium or Acronis. So simply copying the stuff as suggested isn’t possible either. (I don’t have a Mac)

Why is this so complicated? I can’t possibly be the first person to want to replace a Channels drive. Is there really no option other than starting over? I've already spent way more time messing with this than I wanted to and now my wife is getting mad at me that it's still broken. And it's looking like the only option is going to be starting from scratch. :confused:

If anyone knows how I can fix this please let me know. I need to get it done in the next couple days.

#7

Here is a photo of the boot screen with the new drive…

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image1920×2560 611 KB

#8

It's supposed to mount automatically..

Maybe try going into Disk Management and right-click the DVR partition to select mount

It should look similar to this:

RPI4 - can formatted USB boot drive be read in Windows?
#9

See also How to Mount and Unmount a Drive or Volume in Windows | Tutorials

RPI4 - can formatted USB boot drive be read in Windows?
#10

Well it worked, but I still don’t understand why cloning the disk didn’t work. It would have been a lot easier that way. :man_shrugging: