[nmglug] UUID
Brian O'Keefe
okeefe at cybermesa.com
Sun Aug 10 15:08:53 PDT 2025
Model is ASUS F505ZA-DH51
Thanks much Paul!
I have followed a disassembly youtube vid and yes, it requires removing
the keyboard by removing all the screws from the bottom and running a
guitar pick under the surface of the top edge and then the keyboard is
removable. I carefully lift and tip the keyboard out, leaving the
connectors. Then the mother board is accessible and the show me guy
swaps out drives. Where he has a drive, I do not. It's not there. The
expansion bay for a 2.5" drive is visible but it's upside down. I had
cloned the onboard drive to a 500GB SSD and was able to gently get it,
upside down, into the bay and plugged in. It shows up as a bootable
drive in the BIOS. But the UUID problem causes the onboard drive to boot
regardless of my setting the boot order (which I can discern by the size
of the partitions). Obviously the default as it doesn't matter how I set
the boot order, I can't boot the expansion bay drive. Obviously the
machine wants to boot the factory drive. I think changing the UUID is
possibly best.
On 8/10/25 03:12PM, Paul wrote:
> Do you have a model number for the laptop? If you provide it, we might
> find some disassembly guides.
>
> Have you tried removing the keyboard to see if you have access to the
> ssd that way? I know some Asus models did that at one point. I hate
> how difficult laptops have gotten to work on. I love my Thinkpad t480.
> It's nice and easy to work on. But it's getting a bit long in the
> tooth, and accessible hardware is definitely the exception and not the
> rule these days.
>
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 10, 2025 at 2:44 PM Brian O'Keefe <okeefe at cybermesa.com>
> wrote:
>
> Thanks Paul
>
> That seems pretty simple. Still wonder why the motherboard is in
> upside down and screws not accessible to lift it out. Weird.
>
> I actually cloned one drive to another, larger drive. I've done
> this many times and would just take out the old drive and install
> the cloned drive. I did this as I required more data storage.
> However, I can't remove the factory drive as it's not accessible.
> If I could I would do what I said. Clone the computer's drive to a
> larger drive, swap them out and boot happily away with the larger
> drive. Changing the UUID made sense but I didn't know how to do that.
>
> On 8/10/25 12:23PM, Paul wrote:
>> It sounds like you may have cloned one partition to the other?
>> This would explain them having the same uuid. You need to change
>> the uuid of one of the partitions.
>>
>> Let's say you want to change the uuid of /dev/sdb1. Make sure the
>> partition is not mounted, then use:
>>
>> `sudo tune2fs -U random /dev/sdb1`
>>
>> That should do it.
>>
>> This is untested on my part, so please do all the necessary
>> backing up, etc. before trying.
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 9, 2025 at 1:20 PM Brian O'Keefe
>> <okeefe at cybermesa.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hello All
>>
>> I'm revisiting an issue I expressed many months (if not
>> years. I have an ASUS laptop in which I wanted to install a
>> 500GB SSD in the vacant bay. I said at the time that the
>> motherboard is up side down so I can't remove the existing
>> drive (a SSD PLUS M.2 NVMe^TM SSD,) and replace with the
>> 500GB SSD drive. I was able to get the regular SSD into the
>> bay and plug it in. It shows up in the BIOS as two separate
>> UUIDs (I have a bootable 313 GB partition and a free space
>> 193 GB partition. When I choose to try and boot the 313 GB
>> partition the computer reverts to the drive stick. I checked
>> the UUIs and the 313GB has a different UUID than the internal
>> stick drive but the same as the 193 SSD. So for some reason,
>> even though I change the boot order so the 313GB boots, the
>> computer reverts to the onboard UUID and boots that. I don't
>> know how the 193 GB drive got the same UUID but it did.
>>
>> When I boot the computer I get the option of booting Ubuntu
>> 20.04 but 16.04 is also listed. That is the 313 GB which I
>> was planning to wipe and install 25.04. Perhaps I can wipe it
>> with GParted and try installing 25.04 on it.
>>
>> Sorry about the long screed! I'd love to get the 313GB to
>> boot 25.04 so I can see if it works on the old cloned 313GB
>> drive with 16.04. If that worked I'd have a current back-up
>> (I have one, the unbootable 313GB drive which won't boot). I
>> would then upgrade the 313 GB drive after cloning the onboard
>> drive. If the cloned 313GB drive updated then I would have my
>> current mountains of data on the 313GB drive. But if it won't
>> boot now why would it boot later, after all of the work?
>>
>> Many thanks if anyone wants to help. If not I completely
>> understand
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Brian
>>
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