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There was an SSD drive with Xubuntu distro installed. If booted, I can see it has one ext4 partition.

It worked fine but was planned to be moved to other HDD and to another machine.

I run live iso Ubuntu 18.10, started GParted and found out, that entire source drive is one partition of iso9660 type. I didn't know how to handle this, so I cloned all the source drive using dd, and saved it as a file.

Now, when I write image to HDD, it does boot, but there are some errors in FS and it finishes in initramfs. But that's not the point.

I still have the exact image of original drive and my question is how can I get the inner OS from iso9660 filesystem. After mounting this image I see and can browse only iso partition which is 2GB size. But where I can find target drive, ext4 partition, mentioned before, that would be visible if I had booted from original drive?

Update

I ran a few tests and the results are not consistent. When using fdisk with LiveISO, it show Linux partition, when doing the same using Gparted, it shows ISO9660. Another test, booting Ubuntu from the subject, fdisk shows the same as before, df -T show ext4, but Gparted again - iso9660.

LiveISO fdisk LiveISO fdisk

LiveISO GParted LiveISO GParted

Ubuntu fdisk and df -T enter image description here

Ubuntu GParted
enter image description here

qba-dev
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1 Answers1

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Installing ISO9660 File to HDD

The ISO9660 partition is a clone of the ISO file, Prior to 19.10 any space greater than the size of the ISO file is wasted. The Drive will fail if the ISO9660 partition is written to or modified.

A Live install on the HDD is read only and will not save new programs or data.

People generally want to put a full install of Ubuntu on the HDD, so that they can install programs and save data and settings. A full install also allows software updates and version upgrades, hibernation and proprietary drivers.

Use an app such as UNetbootin or Rufus to make an installer USB from your ISO file.

You can then use the Live USB "Install Ubuntu" option to install to HDD.

Another option is to dd your ext4 SSD install to another disk.

C.S.Cameron
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