Windows 10: Cloned HDD onto SSD, managed to boot from SSD, formatted HDD, now SSD won't boot

Full details - I bought a new Samsung SSD for my laptop, put it into the spare M.2 NVME slot, cloned my OEM installed SSD onto it using Samsung Data Migration, removed the OEM SSD, booted from the new one and it worked like a charm.

Now, I tried to do the same thing with my sister's laptop - it had an OEM installed HDD and a spare M.2 NVME slot. I put the spare SSD into that slot. The Samsung Data Migration tool wasn't compatible with cloning onto my OEM SSD so I used Macrium Reflect and cloned the HDD, partition for partition. Then when I tried booting, it was still booting from the HDD even though it detected the SSD as an E: drive. So I tried Advanced Startup -> boot from SSD, and it loaded in my sister's Windows installation from the SSD. However, a restart made it boot from the HDD again.

Now, I unplugged the HDD, booted up, and the system loaded from the SSD. Plugged the HDD back in, booted again, and it loaded from SSD again - perfect! Only issue now is when I ran a restart to ensure it was all working fine, yet again it booted from the HDD and not the SSD ****!.

Now here's where things get really bad - I unplugged HDD, booted from SSD, worked fine. Plugged HDD back in, booted up again and it booted from SSD again. Then, I formatted the HDD which at this point was showing up as D: using the diskpart utility. Clean, format, assign, all ran fine. Then I closed the cmd window, ensured that the HDD was still showing in Explorer as an empty drive, and restarted.

And from that point on, I have not been able to boot into Windows at all. The expectation was that with the HDD being formatted, the system would boot up from the SSD, which it was doing just fine when the HDD was unplugged. However, it went straight to a blue screen error with error code: 0xc000000e. I cannot access recovery environment, I cannot access safe boot, only option is to go into the BIOS. Over there, the options are the usual - Windows Boot Manager clicking it shows the only option as the SSD, USB Flash/Disk Drive, etc. etc. the usual stuff.


As an additional test, I removed the SSD and put it back in my laptop which is now running on that new SSD I bought and tried to at least boot into Windows and see if I could access the data on the OEM SSD's drive. My laptop also went straight to BSOD and gave the same error code and same symptoms. Luckily, when I removed that SSD from my laptop and booted up with just my new SSD plugged in, it booted fine and my Windows installation is still running okay.

• What is causing the error?
• How can I fix it?

Anybody who has experience with these kinds of errors - please help out. My sister's online classes resume tomorrow and I wouldn't want this issue to still be there. I know the clone process worked fine - I was able to boot from it earlier, even with the HDD unplugged. It just turned into this whole mess after I formatted the HDD which had my sister's original installation of Windows!

:)

 

Problem with boot after cloning HDD to SSD - Please Help !

Hi,

I have windows 10 on my Dell and I just cloned my HDD onto a SSD. I changed the BIOS priority with 1) SSD and 2) HDD. The boot was still very slow as if on my HDD (and not SSD). When I look at the C:/Windows/Temp it gives me today's date, which means
to me that it has booted on the C:/. When I look at the F:/Windows/Temp I have yesterday's date (when I cloned). F:/ is my SSD.

What did I do wrong and how can I boot from the SSD drive?

I would like to keep the HDD as back up. FYI the HDD is on SATA 1, CD on SATA 2 and SSD on SATA 3.

Here is a picture of my disc manager.

Thanks !

 

How to change boot from HDD to SSD?

Hello,

Thank you for the advice, I followed your instruction, went to F2 in BIOS and changed sequence of bootable disks putting SDD on top of HDD, so it was on BIOS like this :1) Windows, 2) SSD Crucial; 3) Toshiba HDD ( original drive).

But results were pretty suprising: booting did not cut by 80% like some people say it will if boot will go from SSD instead of HDD. It looks to me booting from SSD is even longer than from HDD and I now wonder if cloning was done correctly, may be it something
wrong with partition?

I checked disk management and copied image from it. Disk 1 (SSD) shows Healthy (primary partition) and HDD shows Healthy (boot, page file, crash dump and primary partition). SSD is missing page file, crash dump) May be it's the reason why SSD boot is slow?
And if I will have to erase my cloned Windows from SSD is it possible to clone it again to the same SSD may be using different software?. I am afraid if I format SSD to re-clone my HDD, it will erase not just my Windows and some other apps on SSD but also
it will erase installation software that came with SSD. I will appreciate your advice.

AD

 

HDD to SSD

I don't understand why you changed the boot order in your BIOS.

When you image or clone an HDD, and restore the image or clone to an SSD, you've got an identical copy of your computer on a different hard drive. Nothing has changed, really. So the next step is to remove the HDD from your computer and replace it with the
SSD, then carry on as normal.