Windows 10: Macrium cloned / restored images to ANOTHER drive will not boot? MBR

I hope some of you might be able to shed some light on boot issues I'm experiencing with my cloned boot images.

A little background
I currently boot from an SSD which is in MBR format; booting from a UEFI compatible motherboard. I also have a second SSD which is may DATA drive - also MBR. Something leads me to think that mentioning this is relevant, as I believe they affect one another?

It appears that the bitmap image on the DATA drive is messed up. I've recently noticed missing files on that drive when I restored an image for my boot drive. The reason for restoring a boot image is because the boot drive sometimes randomly goes into the "Attempting to repair / diagnosing PC" loop - start up repair or Macrium's own 'fix boot issues' don't work. Neither does bootrec /rebuildbcd etc.

Let's say I've saved some files this morning on the data SSD, then my boot drive messes up in the afternoon, I would restore my boot drive image from last week, but then notice those recent files are missing on the data drive. Running scan disk and fixing errors would usually restore those files, but I have also experienced instances of some files being corrupted when opened. Might be worth mentioning that if I restored a boot image from 2 weeks ago, the files on the data drive (after running scan disk) may be slightly different to the more recent image (if that makes sense?). Anyone know what's happening here?

Back to the boot image issues
Whilst restoring intelligent or exact images back to the original SSD drive would be fine, trying to restore to another drive would always result in "Attempting to repair / diagnosing PC" loop. I've even tried restoring to a 'cleaned' disk - cleaned via diskpart or through disk mgmt. This makes me think it may be something to do with the MBR? Surely a sector-by-sector (exact) clone would have captured everything?

I also discovered there were issues on the boot disk (Macrium throws up error code 9 when trying to verify disk for intelligent clone), so have fixed this error via diskpart (chkdsk) within the PE environment before cloning (and even fixed via scan disk on another PC via USB). So although the boot drive has been fixed, cloning to another drive (whether direct sector-by-sector clone or via image restoration) just would not boot.

I'm pretty sure above bold was fine in the past (was hoping it had something to do with error 9 but unfortunately not). Does anyone know what is going on?

:)

 

Restoring Windows 10 Image using Macrium Reflect


In addition to the above. Here's my suggestion in step by step.
I assume you have Macrium Installed in your current HD and already made a backup copy.

1. Connect your new HD via USB port and boot up.
2. Run Macrium, click on Restore tab then select the Backup Image that you made to restore
3. click on "select a different target disk" then select your new HD as destination
   
   
   
4. Proceed to restore then Shutdown and disconnect the old HD and replace with the new HD
5. Boot up with your new HD.

 

Cloned WIN10/64 Boot drive will not Boot! Boot volume stays OFFLINE

Rather than using the Macrium Reflect cloning process, I have had better success with this method:

1. Create an image of the old disk. Park it on an external disk.
2. Create a Macrium Reflect USB rescue disk.
3. Disconnect the old disk, connect the new disk.
4. Boot the machine with the USB rescue disk.
5. Restore the image onto the new disk.
6. Boot the machine with only the new disk connected.

 

Using Macrium to restore mbr image of Win 10 to NVMe GPT

Hello

• I'm running Windows 10 Pro x64 v1903 build 18362.959 on a
• Dell Optiplex 7040 MT w/16GB RAM and 512GB 2.5" SSD
• Win 10 is still MBR partitioned
• I'm adding a 500GB NVMe I purchased from Crucial
• I'm using Macrium Home Edition v7.2.5107 (s/b latest version)

I want to restore my backup image from a USB external drive to the NVMe and convert MBR to GPT partitioning as well. I understand I should disable the SATA 2.5" SSD in BIOS before the restore.

What I'm not sure of: will Macrium restore to new Hardware (the NVMe) and by default also convert from MBR to GPT or are there additional steps to get the partitioning done as part of the restore? Any other tips/info you think might be helpful in the process are welcome as well.

Thanks in advance for the help!