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Can I clone an NTFS Windows partition locally to another drive but only changing the UUID? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I had cloned my original hard disk installation to SSD using Macrium Reflect. But it caused confusion because they had the same UUID.

My plan is to regularly image the Windows partition to the spare hard disk as a backup in case of SSD failure.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I forgot if it was Disk Magic or CloneZilla that I used to copy over my the Windows install I had and it worked great

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Why not run veeam community edition?

Alternatively there are several backup solutions that are free for personal use that can image your machine on an automated basis.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Maybe use the image drive option in Reflect instead? It's easy to restore the image later by booting from USB.

Otherwise I believe there's a tool to change the uuid, but I'd be a bit nervous of having two near identical drives online in case the OS gets confused and puts some things in the wrong spot.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

The OS does not get confused once it is up and running. I had some fun times initially where I could not figure out which bootloader was loading which install. It was actually the hard disk based original bootloader that was being used even if the OS loaded from M2 SSD. After figuring this out, I changed the UUID using some Linux tool. Now there is no confusion.

To avoid this in future, I want to keep the partitions UUID intact, while only reflecting the contents. This is probably not possible with free versions of Macrium etc.