I recommend FSArchiver, it can handle different size partitions

Dd with count does work. scroll down to: Use dd, with the count option. response response

https://serverfault.com/questions/439128/dd-on-entire-disk-but-do-not-want-empty-portion

I’d use clonezilla

E: It’s not that it can’t be done other ways, it’s just clonezilla will work and has worked for nearly 2 decades. Also there’s no information provided above about the data. So clonezilla is nice if it’s a complicated scenario.

Plus, it’s a nice tool to throw in the toolbox once you know how to use it.

E. Why do you feel like you have to use something like dd for this particular task? Less than 16 GB of data? Ya probably could have copied it over manually by now.

Is the 16gb partition the first partition? If so I’d just dd the 128gb drive at the 32gb drive then fix the partition table and remove the others.

If it’s not the first partition use gparted to copy it to the new drive.

Is it OK to simply dd the 128GB disk to the 32GB disk using count to stop after the 16GB partition was cloned?

I think it would work, but it seems a little overcomplicated, you can just use the partition paths as if and of of dd directly, as long as the output partition is not smaller than the input partition. For example dd if=/dev/sdc1 of=/dev/sdd1 bs=4M status=progress

Your method would also copy the partition table I suppose, which might be something you want under specific circumstances, but then it would be a little harder to get the count right, just taking the size of partition 1 would be wrong, because there is some space before it (where the partition table lives) and dd would start at 0. You’d need to add up the start position and the size of partition 1 instead.

Personally I would prefer making a new partition table on the new eMCC, and create a target partition on it. Then you clone the content of the partition (i.e. the file system). This way the file system UUID will still be the same, and the fstab should still work because these days it usually refers to mounts by filesystem UUID in my experience.

If you make the target partition larger than the source partition, and you intend to use the full partition going forward you will additionally need to resize the filesystem to fit the new larger partition, for example with resize2fs.

If I understand the problem correctly it has a pretty simple solution that I have done before. Make a new partition on the destination and dd if=/dev/diskAsB of=/dev/diskXsY where A is the source disk and B is the source partition and X is the destination disk and Y is the destination partition. You may have to run fsck on the destination afterwards and maybe a gpt repair tool.

Honestly though, since it’s an ext filesystem, if it were me I’d just mount the source and dest and rsync.

@InFerNo if it’s not a boot drive, you can use gparted to copy the partition over - it’s copy and paste, literally. Then set flags using gparted as well. If it’s a boot drive you’ll need an additional step after to use boot-repair to fix the boot sector and load grub onto it.

It’s really simpler than it sounds, I’ve used it a few times myself. You can also use an #Ubuntu iso to execute this process after booting from it to ensure the 16GB partition is not in use when trying to copy it.

#Linux

Do you only have the root parition or do you have everything else too (like /boot)?

1. If you only have root, reinstall the OS then just overwrite the root partition with your old one.
2. Run fsck on the root partition and/or use gparted to expand the ext4 partition. You might have to fuck around with the disk UUIDs to get it to boot again. You’ll most likely have to at the very least change your /etc/fstab file to update the UUID of the boot partition.

if you have everything, you can just dd the sd disk to the emmc, provided that you didn’t mess around with the partitions after.

1. Copy with dd to the emmc with or without the count, it doesn’t matter that much if time isn’t a priority. (something like dd if=/dev/sdcard of=/dev/newemmc). If it fails and says the device is out of memory after 32GB, that’s fine. Any other error is not fine.
2. Use gparted to expand the root partition.
3. fsck the partition.

Could be - just try it ig. And even if not, just create a new partition on the 32 GB disk and then dd it over.

Gnome-disk-utility or “disks” in Linux will clone a partition and then restore it to another disk.

INFO: What filesystem does your source drive/partition have?

@InFerNo@lemmy.ml you should do the partition not the whole disk. Then create a new partition in the 32gb disk or mount the dd file with a loopback device and transfer the files to the whole 32gb disk