INTRO: I am running a SBC (Udoo x86) with 32GB eMMC disk. This “disk” is a chip (integrated circuit), it is soldered to the board itself. I have been using this machine daily for a few years now, but started running out of disk space. This prompted me to get a SSD disk (an M2 unit can be added to the SBC). I decided to clone the sontent of first disk on to the newly added M2 SSD. I used Clonezilla. Sadly I did not read the instructions untill the end, where it clearly states not to keep the original disk inside the machie after cloning.
PROBLEM: I have now a machine with cloned disks and a read-only file systems. I figured I have to change UUIDs for at least the new disk, but I still did ot achieve a working system. I am thrown into emergency mode, tried various rescuing technniques, but nothing permanently works. If I remount the original eMMC with read/write the system automatically starts from emergency mode, but it has limited functionality.
CURRENT SITUATION: I currently do not have a working SBC and do not have enough knowledge about the boot process to fix this. I know this could be an wonderful opportunity to learn, but this is not my goal and would not like to invest my time intofiguriong this out. I have lost 2 days already and my ultimate target is to have a working SBC with all my old data, so any help will be appreciated.
Cloning never worked for me in the past. It is probably easier to install fresh on the M2 and not to try first to revive the old installation on the eMMC.
This is what I would do.
put latest Lubuntu ISO on a USB stick
leave the M2 disk in place
boot from USB
install Lubuntu onto the M2 disk (select that device, and do not install on eMMC!!)
Hopefully you will end up with a bootable system running a fresh Lubuntu from the M2.
When you’re in that stable situation, move/migrate data from the eMMC to the fresh M2 installation. If you used Firefox and/or Thunderbird, you can copy user-profile data from eMMC to M2 really easy (ask for help if needed). No passwords lost, no bookmarks lost, same mail accounts and content as on the old system. I have no experience with other browsers or mail clients.
Long time stability (without data corruption or total data loss) of a M2 device is much better than from eMMC. Speed maybe too, but I’m not sure about that.