Dell G15 Ryzen won't clone internal M.2 to external drive

[lynnejohn]

Hardware:
Dell G15 Ryzen booted via USB into Ubuntu Mate 20.10
External 'Other World Computing OWC Envoy Pro USB-C' that contains a 1.0TB OWC Aura P12 Pro M.2 NVMe SSD

New Laptop that I'm trying to upgrade the M.2 ssd on. I want to clone the internal ssd2 drive over to the external M.2 ssd and then expand the partition on the external one. Booting up in Ubuntu Mate is fine and I've run numerous different dd commands trying to get this to work but each time once the dd command completes the external drive has a 'unrecognised disk label'. I've asked OWC if there are any issues with their enclosure or M.2 ssd and they don't think so.

Something special about dd and M.2 ssd's, or maybe Mate does not like the new laptop?

Any tips would be appreciated.

sudo dd if=/dev/nvme0n1 of=/dev/sdb bs=64K conv=fsync status=progress

Internal ssd
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 476.94 GiB, 512110190592 bytes, 1000215216 sectors
Disk model: PM991a NVMe Samsung 512GB
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 16384 bytes / 131072 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: CAD16F0C-9ED1-4AF1-94CE-30AE4F59F377

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1 2048 514047 512000 250M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2 514048 776191 262144 128M Microsoft reserved
/dev/nvme0n1p3 776192 957186047 956409856 456.1G Microsoft basic data
/dev/nvme0n1p4 957186048 959213567 2027520 990M Windows recovery environment
/dev/nvme0n1p5 959213568 997347327 38133760 18.2G Windows recovery environment
/dev/nvme0n1p6 997349376 1000214527 2865152 1.4G Windows recovery environment

External before copy
Disk /dev/sdb: 894.25 GiB, 960197124096 bytes, 234423126 sectors
Disk model: Envoy Pro USB-C
Units: sectors of 1 * 4096 = 4096 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 268431360 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xc16a8571

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1 1 4294967295 4294967295 16T ee GPT

[gordon]

Try a sudo partprobe right after using dd to copy one SSD to the other. That command tells the kernel to expect partition tables to have changed; otherwise, the kernel gets confused.

[lynnejohn]

Was really hoping it was a simple answer but no luck. The partitions are out to lunch. Any issue with it being that I'm only 'trying' Ubuntu Mate in the USB or that there is some driver issue?

Thanks,

ubuntu-mate@ubuntu-mate:~$ sudo dd if=/dev/nvme0n1 of=/dev/sdb bs=64K conv=fsync status=progress
511475122176 bytes (511 GB, 476 GiB) copied, 537 s, 952 MB/s
7814181+1 records in
7814181+1 records out
512110190592 bytes (512 GB, 477 GiB) copied, 542.575 s, 944 MB/s
ubuntu-mate@ubuntu-mate:~$ sudo partprobe
ubuntu-mate@ubuntu-mate:~$ gparted
Unit \xe2\x97\x8f.service does not exist, proceeding anyway.
GParted 1.0.0
configuration --enable-libparted-dmraid --enable-online-resize
libparted 3.3
/dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label
ubuntu-mate@ubuntu-mate:~$ sync
ubuntu-mate@ubuntu-mate:~$ sudo partprobe
ubuntu-mate@ubuntu-mate:~$ man partprobe
ubuntu-mate@ubuntu-mate:~$ sudo partprobe -s
/dev/sda: gpt partitions 1 2 3 4
/dev/sdb: msdos partitions
/dev/nvme0n1: gpt partitions 1 2 3 4 5 6
ubuntu-mate@ubuntu-mate:~$ man partprobe

[lynnejohn]

Update: Removed the Dell's M.2 internal ssd and placed it into a "OWC Envoy Pro USB-C" external case. I then booted an old IBM Thinkpad with Ubuntu Mate via the USB and ran the dd command using older USB ports(one connected to the original Dell's internal ssd and one connected to the new larger M.2 drive.)
The dd command took 6 hours to complete but the problem still exists(I did run the partprobe command.) At this point I'm thinking that their is some issue with the "OWC Envoy Pro USB-C" external case but I did notice that when I plugged in Dell's M.2 ssd(in the external case), Ubuntu asked for a password for the drive(I did not see this originally when booting Ubuntu Mate in the new Dell).
Why would Ubuntu Mate ask me for a password as this is a stock Dell image and all the drive partitions show up when using the fdisk command.

Thanks