Largest NVMe drive for Push 3 Standalone

[Wubzy22]

What software did you use for the clone?

Terminal. Perhaps I didn’t unmount the drives. I just checked the temporary ssd in gparted and it looks good. Data partition was resizeable, yay. Now I’m cloning that to my new 2tb nvme drive for the push. Fingers crossed.
I asked ChatGPT for command lines. It told me only to unmount the target drive, which is what I’m doing.

I need a new pad for the cpu, the existing one was damaged when I removed the cover. Any ideas what kind to use? Does it matter?

[mslinn]

Terminal may be how you invoked the software from a command line, but Terminal is incapable of doing anything with drives.

By pad, do you mean CPU pad, like this? https://www.amazon.com/thermal-pad/s?k=thermal+pad
I expect matching the thickness to be the main issue.

[Wubzy22]

Terminal may be how you invoked the software from a command line, but Terminal is incapable of doing anything with drives.

By pad, do you mean CPU pad, like this? https://www.amazon.com/thermal-pad/s?k=thermal+pad
I expect matching the thickness to be the main issue.

I actually bought one of those pad sets already, thanks.
Command line yes. Gparted is limiting how large a partition I can make without throwing an error. 2TB NVme. I'm trying to follow CH7s instructions on deleting the new data partition, making a new one and dragging the files from the original ssd 'data' partition onto it.. However I'm having trouble figuring out how to get permissions to allow me to do that.
I should have known this would be harder than I anticipated.
Any help greatly appreciated

[mslinn]

More information would help us help you.

- MacOS, right?

- OS version?

- What did you use to clone the drive? If you used the command line, please list the commands out (perhaps you used dd?). If you used a GUI, what program was it?

[Wubzy22]

MacOS Ventura 13.6.3

I used command line;

diskutil list (lists all connected disks)

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk4

Unmount of all volumes on disk4 was successful

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk5

Unmount of all volumes on disk5 was successful

sudo dd if=/dev/rdisk4 of=/dev/rdisk5 bs=1m status=progress
Password:
255942721536 bytes (256 GB, 238 GiB) transferred 1905.009s, 134 MB/s
244198+1 records in
244198+1 records out

[mslinn]

Seems like diskutil does not know about ext4 drives. Here is an article that might help:

https://www.maketecheasier.com/mount-ac ... ition-mac/

[Wubzy22]

Well. I went out and got a 1TB drive instead WD Black SN850X. That one worked first time. I'll settle for that, still way better than the stock 256GB. I just couldn't figure out how to resize the data partition on the 2TB disk in gparted. Kept on returning errors.
Then I tried deleting that partition and reformatting it to transfer the 'data' partition files and folders from the original SSD. No luck there either, couldnt figure out how to change permissions.

[Wubzy22]

Seems like diskutil does not know about ext4 drives. Here is an article that might help:

https://www.maketecheasier.com/mount-ac ... ition-mac/

That article said it wasn't great to rely on these solutions for writing too much ext4 data. So I didn't try. Still, got partial success.

[mslinn]

The article mostly discussed running your Mac with a live ext4 partition, which is not a good idea. However, manipulating ext4 partitions is a different activity.

I searched for a few minutes on your behalf, and it appears that Mac users have 2 choices:

1) Use Parallels to run a Linux virtual machine like Ubuntu Desktop, and use that to clone the drive with CloneZilla
2) Install Linux onto a USB stick and install CloneZilla. This seems like the best option for regular folk unless you already have Parallels set up. Ubuntu.com has more.

Once cloned, use the Linux gparted command to resize the data partition on the new drive.

[Wubzy22]

I have a windows laptop and was running ubuntu desktop from a USB drive on it, using gparted to try and resize the main data partition afterwar. Successful with the 1TB, not with the 2TB.
I cloned it with mac, using command lines from the YT video earlier on this thread. I also used clonezilla running from a USB drive on my laptop and I used Macrium Reflect on the PC also.. All ended you with the same problem of not being able to extend partition 5 on the ssd to full capacity. I believe it was do-able up to 1 TB or so extension before it returned the “new size results in too many block group descriptors” error.
Macrium reflect allows you to resize partitions before the clone but NOT for ext 4 filesystem.
I tried various command lines in terminal that ChatGPT supplied for various fixes (check filesystem, change blocs size , change ownership etc) but again, no success.

Perhaps a different disk would work.
Anyway, given up for now, I’ll settle for the 1TB, unless anyone thinks they know what I’m doing wrong.

[mslinn]

I found a good explanation for the error you encountered. It seems there is an upper limit to how big the data partition can be expanded to before the block size needs to be increased.

The ext4 maximum (and default) block size is 4096. It seems Ableton is using a smaller block size, to minimize the wasting of file space. Small block sizes require more fetches to read in large files, but since most files that Ableton Live needs are rather small, the system will work best with the smallest usable block size for the installed drive.

Larger block sizes allow for larger partition sizes and larger file sizes; however, they also increase the minimum file size. The default ext4 block size of 4096 (4 KB) means a one-byte file will occupy 4096 bytes in your drive. So you want the smallest block size that can address 2 TB, but is also big enough for your largest anticipated file. 4K is the default, and it is a reasonable number to try. That brings up the question of what the largest file you will ever need on your Push, but I cannot answer that.

Here is an explanation of ext4.

The resize2fs command should fix your problem. The operation will probably take at least an hour.

Gparted can also increase partition size and block size. Here is the documentation. Note that the drive must be unmounted for this to work.

However, it would be good to know for certain if the drive's partition table is formatted as MBR or GPT. MBR has a 2 TB limit, while GPT can work on larger drives. Some "2 TB" drives are larger than others. Mostly they are more-or-less 2 TB. If your new drive is 2 TB plus one more byte, then MBR will have a problem.

I used ssh to connect to my Push 3, and discovered that the system has been pared down to the bare minimum:

Code: Select all

ableton@push:~$ sudo fdisk -l
-sh: sudo: command not found
ableton@push:~$ fdisk -l
-sh: fdisk: command not found

So that means I would have to pull out the drive from my Push 3 and mount it in a running Linux system so the fdisk command can report the drive's partition table format. I have a client to attend to, so I do not have time for that, unfortunately.

This is what the output for the above command looks like for one drive on one of my Ubuntu servers (this NOT a Push):

Code: Select all

Disk /dev/sdb: 3.64 TiB, 4000787030016 bytes, 7814037168 sectors
Disk model: CT4000MX500SSD1
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 6E35A989-4A29-4E12-82CF-C76DF0033AFB

Device          Start        End    Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sdb1        2048    1050623    1048576  512M EFI System
/dev/sdb2     1050624 3907543039 3906492416  1.8T Linux filesystem
/dev/sdb3  3907543040 7814035455 3906492416  1.8T Linux filesystem

You can see the block size is 4K, and the drive uses GPT formatted partition tables.

[Wubzy22]

Oh wow. That's a lot of effort and is much appreciated, thanks.
Lots of interesting info here, will do more investigating and give this 2tb drive another try maybe.

[Wubzy22]

@mslinn

I finally got it to work following CH7s instructions. deleted data partition on new SSD, Reformatted it and transferred music folder from OG SSD to the new one. Changed permissions for the data partition and boom. works. Just need to get another authorization from Ableton now.

Thanks for your help. I don't think it's possible without deleting the data partition. Resizing it was not happening for me in any of the ways I tried.

[Wubzy22]

I've got a Gen4 2TB working now on the Push.

The push won't recognize this extra space naturally, as the clone of the original drive also writes the disk block with its original space allocations.

After a successful clone [on Windows i used DiskGenius] you then need a Linux installation to change the drive parameters.
When I did this I didn't have Linux and somehow wrangled a VirtualBox installation of Linux Ubunto with workarounds for the VR to see the external drives. A very long story. I would advise anyone trying this to create a dual boot system and have a real Linux install. Or use a Mac.

Once you have Linux access you can use Gparted to delete and recreate the /data drive to use all of the available space. ;0)
The drive needs to be created as ext4 and labeled 'data' and also named 'data' this is important as the Push OS is looking for this label.

Now for the fun part.

When i first authorized the Push i didn't realize there were write issues. eg important config files weren't being created/updated or saved to the data partition. I have 'Live 11 Suite', yet the Push kept showing 'Live 11 Intro', then i noticed an error whilst trying to factory reset and reauthorize the Push.


[EDIT] repasting what i pasted in another thread.

I had upgraded the SSD from 250gb to 2TB, this required me to delete the /data partition and recreate the partition via Gparted on Linux, to use all of the extra space on the drive. The problem with this is it came with premission errors meaning the Push OS couldn't write the config files it needed to that /data partition.

When i Authorise the PUSH [via a USB to Ethernet dongle] I got the following error -

The file "/data/.local/share/Ableton/Installation.cfg" cannot be opened for writing because it is write-protected.

At least this clue was there.

It seems the same write protection also prevented the WIFI password from being saved along with its config files. There were no other clues to this.
The solution was simple enough, I removed the SSD to a M.2 to USB Dongle, then booted into a Linux installation which allowed me to see the drives.

The following result was found when searching for write-protection faults.
"
Open the terminal.
Type sudo chmod 777 /data/ and press Enter. This command will give all users full read, write, and execute permissions to the directory /data/.
If prompted, enter your password and press Enter.
"

In my case, the /data partition was found as /media/<user name>/data . The command was modified to sudo 'chmod -R 777 /media/<user name>/data'.

[where -R recursively sets read/write/execute globally for all the files on that drive. ]

Now with the SSD back in the Push, I did another factory reset, [as other config files from the initial boot won't be where they need to be. ]
I then reauthorized the Push, this time there were no errors. When i rebooted the PUSH it showed "Ableton Live 11 Suite". 1.8tb space available

As a bonus, the Wifi now works.

After allowing me to save the password, the selected network is displayed in 'green'. I didn't know this. Once again there were no clues to why this had failed before. I guess drive upgrades and write protection faults were never anticipated. A failure to verify a file write could have been followed by the Push OS correcting for that fault.

The Push with this 'slow' 4800Mb/s Gen4 SSD now boots in 35 seconds. These things can do 7400Mb/s which i wish i'd gone for.

I hope others find this useful.

#upgraded SSD

Hey CH7. Thanks for these directions. I tried many times, getting little parts and steps wrong, several times, till I didn't. Cheers mate. Got a 2TB Gen 4 drive in there now. Woop Woop

[lmbauer2017]

Hey CH7. Thanks for these directions. I tried many times, getting little parts and steps wrong, several times, till I didn't. Cheers mate. Got a 2TB Gen 4 drive in there now. Woop Woop

Your victory is palpable. Reading through this saga gave me inspiration and was absolutely fascinating. Bless you, @CH7, @mslinn, and many others for paving the way and taking the time to meticulously document your efforts for layman people like me to follow. It’s users like you all that keep the Internet and its original intent alive and thriving.

Whew, sorry I had to get that off my chest lol. I do have a question though, other than the various mistakes here and there, would you say the main issue for you trying to resize the data partition instead of deleting it first and then rebuilding it? I was trying to gather why it all of a sudden worked for you in the end, but I may be just misunderstanding the terminology. Thank you!