In this guide I will record the steps I completed to move the rootfs to a SSD harddrive.
When your hard disk is connected to your cubietruck power on and connect via Putty (or control directly via keyboard).

  1. Check, if the hard disk was found and what kind of partitions are available: 
    seiler@cubietruck:~# sudo fdisk -l

    The resuls will look somehow similar to this:

    Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 206847 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 206848 312578047 156185600 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

     

  2. I have a sdd connected with two partitions sda1 and sda2 – sda1 has a boot flag.
  3. In the next step the partitions will be deleted (yes, you will loose the data on your hdd). 
    seiler@cubietruck:~# sudo fdisk /dev/sda

     

  4. With „d“ followed by the partition number you can delete a partition. In my case, I used: „d“, followed by „1“ and „d“ followed by „2“.
  5. To add a new partition press „n“ 
    Command (m for help): d
Partition number (1-4): 1

Command (m for help): d
Selected partition 2

Command (m for help): 2
2: unknown command
Command action
a toggle a bootable flag
b edit bsd disklabel
c toggle the dos compatibility flag
d delete a partition
l list known partition types
m print this menu
n add a new partition
o create a new empty DOS partition table
p print the partition table
q quit without saving changes
s create a new empty Sun disklabel
t change a partition's system id
u change display/entry units
v verify the partition table
w write table to disk and exit
x extra functionality (experts only)

Command (m for help): n
Partition type:
p primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
e extended
Select (default p): p
Partition number (1-4, default 1): 1
First sector (2048-312581807, default 2048):
Using default value 2048
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G} (2048-312581807, default 312581807):
Using default value 312581807

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x4b1d5d07

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2048 312581807 156289880 83 Linux

Command (m for help):
a
1

w

     

  6. In the next we are formating the newly created partition: 
    seiler@cubietruck:~# sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1

    Output looks like:

    mke2fs 1.42.5 (29-Jul-2012)
Discarding device blocks: done
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks
9773056 inodes, 39072470 blocks
1953623 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=0
1193 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8192 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872

Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

     

  7. Moving the data: 
    seiler@cubietruck:~# sudo dd if=/dev/nandb of=/dev/sda1 bs=1024

    Output on command line will look like:

    2048+0 records in
2048+0 records out
2147483648 bytes (2.1 GB) copied, 235.38 s, 9.1 MB/s
seiler@cubietruck:~#

    This process took about 4-5 minutes to complete.

  8. Finally, you need to edit the  uEnv.txt to boot from the SSD hard drive: 
    seiler@cubietruck:~# sudo mount /dev/nanda /mnt/
    seiler@cubietruck:~# sudo nano /mnt/uEnv.txt

    Set the last line to:

    nand_root=/dev/sda1

    Save (Strg+O) and Exit (Strg+X)

  9. Last step: rebooting: 
    seiler@cubietruck:~# sudo reboot

     

    Broadcast message from root@cubietruck
(/dev/pts/1) at 19:13 ...

The system is going down for reboot NOW!