I have set up a refurbished PC as a media PC with storage. The OS, Debian, is on an m.2 nvme disk of 256 GB. I have connected 2x4TB risks in zfs mirror mode to store my media.
Off late, while booting, I’ve noticed some messages that suggest that the health of nvme disk is not good. Searching the error, i realised that I should not rely on it. I’ve done a number of tweaks to set up my system the way I like that I want to save by creating an image of the OS drive on a fresh nvme disk of same size that I have.
How do I go about doing it? I could boot using a live USB and create the image on the HDDs but the live USB OS won’t recognise my zfs, right? Is using another external disk or another PC my only option here?
Thanks and cheers!
PS: The machine is a HP Elitedesk 800 G3 that has a wifi port that I’ve heard can be used as additional port for m.2 drives. Is it true?
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don’t mess around with imaging to a file on the zfs, then restoring it. simply clone nvme -> nvme using a usb nvme adapter then replace the internal with the clone.
I would like to avoid buying additional hardware if possible.
usb nvme adapters are not expensive and it likely won’t be the only time you need it. they are a handy accessory to have on hand if you have nvme storage.
I’ll definitely take this route if the wifi slot will not support the m.2 drive. Thanks for the suggestion.
Use an Ubuntu live USB, all recent versions of Ubuntu have ZFS drivers baked into the live environment. Then you should add your new SSD to the ZFS pool, and remove the old one from the ZFS pool. Your m.2 WiFi slot should be able to host the 2nd drive while you do this, but if not you can use an external USB housing for it, you’ll just have to make sure that the ZFS pool knows its UUID so that it knows it’s the same drive.
Why do I need to add my nvme to the zfs pool? That doesn’t really make sense.
If the wifi slot does support m.2 drivers (I was just looking for some confirmation/document), it’ll solve my problem. Thanks nonetheless.
You need to add the new drive to your existing pool because ZFS stores data across all drives by default, similar to a RAID0. Then you remove the old drive and ZFS will automatically copy the data off the failing drive onto the healthy one and allow you to remove the failing drive with no data loss.
The SSD is 256GB while the two HDDs are 4TB each. What kind of zfs config/array do you suggest I create from them?
That depends on your use case, I just did a simple zpool with no redundancy because I wanted maximum speed/capacity and all my data is backed up on an external HDD. If you need redundancy, I would look online for how to configure that and what the optimal setup is.
Actually, I assumed you just had the SSD, if you have more than 256gb of free space between those HDDs, you can go ahead and remove the SSD from your zpool right now (unless your bootloader is there, then you’ll have to make an EFI system partition on one of the HDDs and install a bootloader first)
If you want an image, it doesn’t matter what the underlying file system is. You should be able to use a tool like Clonezilla and get a 1:1 copy. Depending how you’ve set up partitioning, you could also use
sgdiskto set up the proper partitions andzfs send/recvfor the new data portion of the drive and install a boot loader. That’s probably the way I’d go in this instance.I get the part that the cloning software does not care for the underlying OS. My worry is the fact that I’ll run the cloning software/command from a live USB which will not be able to detect the zfs mirror on my backup drive on its own and thus break the zfs mirror with bad consequences for the existing data. I could not find any commands to make the live USB OS discover and respect the existing zfs configuration.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity
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You could use something like Veeam Endpoint (free), it will image while the OS is running so the underlying ZFS system shouldn’t matter.
I think you want to see “zfs import” command, to get your pool back con the new OS.
Yes, the other answer also suggests this and I think this will do the trick. Thank you for your response.
