Windows 10: Macrium Reflect Clone Fails to Boot Resized Partitions

Hi all,

I'm having trouble getting a bootable image, cloning from GPT/UEFI and restoring to same GPT/UEFI.

I needed to clean reinstall for unrelated reasons, and thought I should use the opportunity to switch to GPT/UEFI. I've done the following... The OS works great. But I can't make a working clone that involves resizing. I get to the Windows Logo (which may come from the Windows Boot Manager before it gets to the OS?) But it hangs for a minute and then I get "Inaccessible Boot Device"

1) Known good hardware: MSI Meg ACE w/3900x, etc. I've been running this for months with no issues.

2) Known good OS...
2a) Set Boot to "UEFI Only"
2b) Booted from USB Windows install media
2c) Clean Installed Windows 10 Pro (v. 2004, build 19041.388) on 2TB M.2 SSD
2d) Ran it, tested stuff, installed software, and am typing this on it right now.
2e) Total used space after installs is about 45GB.

3) Macrium Reflect backup to non-boot hard drive.

4) Macrium Reflect restore to known good 240GB external SSD.
4a) GPT partition and 16MB future use partition copied as-is.
4b) Nearly 2TB "C:" drive resized using Macrium during restore to shrink it to about 200GB (so it will fit).
4c) Windows System Restore partition in the same order and size. But it is of course directly after the smaller C: drive so effectively has moved closer to the front.
4d) NOTE: All of this step 4 is one operation in Reflect... Just describing it in chunks here.

5) Reboot with boot order set to use external SSD first.

6) System seems to start to boot, but hangs and shortly gives "Boot Device inaccessible" error.

Resizing smaller to fit is a pretty common thing as people resize a mostly empty magnetic 2TB boot drive onto a 512GB SSD, so this seemed like a logical thing to try. Is it not expected that this should work?

Is it because the GPT doesn't get updated with the new size by Macrium? If so, is there a way to fix it?

I've used this method (minus the resizing because it never came up) with MBR drives and volume licensing to deploy clone OSes to multiple computers... Was hoping to do that with GPT this year if I can work it out.

Unfortunately, I don't have another 2TB M.2 SSD to try this without the resize step. Any help will be much appreciated.
Thanks.

:)

 

Macrium Reflect Free Edition (v6.3.1665) not resizing partitions.

I'm trying to clone my 250 GB Windows hard drive to a 1TB hard drive, using Macrium Reflect Free Edition (v6.3.1665). However, it is not allowing me to resize the Windows partition to fit the larger drive. It clearly shows 698.63 GB of unallocated space, but "Cloned Partition Properties" lists the "Maximum Size" of each partition as being the same as its "Original Size", and won't let me resize the partition I wish to resize (the main Windows partition), or any of the partitions for that matter, to fill the extra free space.

Is this a glitch, or just a limitation of the free version?

 

Macrium wont work unless I resize the OS partition?

How to clone your PC hard drive using Macrium Reflect | Windows Central

This talks about MR free. Step 6 of How to clone... :

Includes screenshots.

A little later:

 

Macrium wont work unless I resize the OS partition?

Now 15%, at least its doing it.
Resizing is not entirely automatic, I dont know what software version the other guy was using on his example of a 60gb going to a 30 gb without the user doing anything on a clone . Maybe with the paid version, I can not explain the discrepancy considering my experience here with using it. I am using the free home version. When I removed the last RECOVERY partition from the clone, Macrium proceeded and adjusted the 1 TB partition down to 465 gb or so.

How to clone your PC hard drive using Macrium Reflect | Windows Central