Impossible to boot any VMs or container after Clonezilla backup, from original drive? It’s the disk UUIDs. Clonezilla changes them, Proxmox still looks for the old ones, and nothing starts.
Why Clonezilla breaks Proxmox
Proxmox references storage by UUID in /etc/pve/storage.cfg and in each VM’s config. Clonezilla does a bit-for-bit copy, but it also regenerates UUIDs on the target disk. So the new drive has different UUIDs, but Proxmox config still points to the old ones. VMs and containers can’t find their disks, so they won’t boot.
The fix
You need to update the UUIDs in Proxmox to match the new drive. First, get the new UUIDs with blkid:
blkid /dev/sdX1Then edit /etc/pve/storage.cfg and replace the old UUIDs with the new ones. Do the same for each VM config in /etc/pve/qemu-server/ and container configs in /etc/pve/lxc/. Look for lines like root=UUID=old-uuid or mountpoint=... and update them.
After that, restart the Proxmox services or just reboot the host. Everything should come back up.
My take
This is annoying, but it’s a one-time fix. If you clone a Proxmox disk with Clonezilla, always expect to update UUIDs. Or just use Proxmox’s built-in backup and restore—it handles all this for you. I’d rather do that than mess with UUIDs every time. But if you’re stuck, this gets you out.
Related: Proxmox container no internet: diagnose from host to CT
