Cloning an SSD

[Teunis]

The company refused access to corporate necessities like their Access and VOIP server via my private Thinkpad W520 computer that also boots Win7.
So I had to accept a company computer and asked for something light and small, I just received a T430s with a 128GB SSD.

Because of the nature of my work I need near full admin access so I can install most things needed by myself.
I noticed it's a lovely little machine but with a rather lousy (LITEONIT LLCT-128) and small SSD, with just the bare essentials installed there is a little over 85GB free.
I'm looking at options to get it dual boot into Kubuntu but want to make it as reversible as possible.

I can shrink the C: drive by say 20GB for a the root and swap of a Kubuntu install and maybe put in a larger SD card (or extra SSD in a caddy) for /home.

Could I install Grub on the SD and boot directly into Win7 when I take out the SD?

Another thought is to clone the present SSD and copy it to a larger (and faster!) one owned by myself and put the company one in a safe place.
Presently there are two partitions, both ntfs, the first is ~105MB and not shown by Windows.

Would this cloning/copying be doable?

[oshunluvr]

Yes - all of the above actually sounds doable. Which is the best choice for you will depend on the parameters. You mention a second drive caddy. That would be the cleanest and safest (i.e. your boss not having any evidence of any system changes) especially if it's bootable. Just install drive 2, set it to boot, install kubuntu on it and you're done. When you need to turn it over to corporate, just pull the second drive.

[dmeyer]

"dd" is perfect for "cloning." Its also perfectly reversible. I would boot a live usb, dd the harddrive to an image and store it oon a larger external hard drive for your needs then modify the system as you see fit.

[Teunis]

In the mean time I've installed Kububtu including Grub on a USB-3 external HD.
This works nicely, when the HD is not connected it's a 'clean' Windows boot, with HD I get the regular Grub menu.

I wonder if a good SD card would improve the speed.

[dibl]

An SDHC card in a USB card reader is fast on reading -- as fast as the USB bus, but it's slow for writing. So it's not much good for lots of file-moving, if they're going onto the card.

[Teunis]

Duh!
Thinkpads can't boot off the build in card reader.
It might be an option to chainload grub from a tiny USB drive but I'll leave that for (much) later.
Presently I use an external USB-3 card reader with a 32GB fast card (45MB/s), it works smoothly but /home is of course a bit limited.

In the process of partitioning the SD card I found out the KDE partition manager does not recognise it (or the slot) but GParted does.

[vinnywright]

Duh!
Thinkpads can't boot off the build in card reader.
It might be an option to chainload grub from a tiny USB drive but I'll leave that for (much) later.
Presently I use an external USB-3 card reader with a 32GB fast card (45MB/s), it works smoothly but /home is of course a bit limited.

In the process of partitioning the SD card I found out the KDE partition manager does not recognise it (or the slot) but GParted does.

a limited /home ,,,,,,, dose not half to be quite so limited , one can use system links for the usual ~/ folders that point to locations on larger partitions ,,, just an idea for ya , I use this method for my testing partitions that have / & ~/ on the same small partition yet wanting large amounts of space for ,,,,lets say Music or even dwhelper

VINNY

[dibl]

Thinkpads can't boot off the build in card reader.

You can buy a SD card reader on a USB cable pretty cheaply -- something like a Sandisk Imagemate is around $30 USD. If your BIOS supports booting from USB device, then it works just fine. You can boot up whatever Linux you have installed on the SDHC card, then mount your internal hard drive, and save your work or downloads there. Saving data on the SDHC card is where it slows down a bit.

[jlittle]

You can buy a SD card reader on a USB cable pretty cheaply -- something like a Sandisk Imagemate is around $30 USD.

In another thread, I claimed it would cost only $10, and the OP went out and got one for $5.

Regards, John Little

[Teunis]

Hmm a nice price but I'm fairly sure it's not USB 3.0
In all my ~15 years with Linux I had never installed the boot loader on an external drive but it works flawlessly, when not connected there is not a trace of it to be found on the laptop.
I now have two installs, one on an external 1.5 TB HD en one on the external 32 GB SD card, both can be connected via USB 3.0 and work quite well.