Windows 10: My Cloned SSD is no longer booting.

win10 pro ver 2004bld 19041.264

Holla Hombres, I've cloned and been using a Crucial 1T SSD for a few days. It replaces a 500G Seagate that was doing just fine but couldn't resist the upgrade. And yes it was awesome... for a while. I used Macrium to clone and it left half the ssd unused so I wanted to get the remainder extended into the primary partition. I kind of gave up on it though, never really finding an option that didn't include purchasing 3rd party software. (I know there are ways to shuffle the partitions around with Disk Management but lets assume that is untenable at the moment) So, I settled for just formatting and installing the remainder as a unique drive. This is what that looks like now from Disk Management



(Disk 0 is not the 500G seagate you'll note. This is the unbootable SSD Disk 1 harnessed into my other computer for diagnostics)
I reformatted the original 500G as a simple data partition while using the SSD as my OS. Poof there goes my backup for the moment but I had been using the SSD to do all this so I didn't expect not to be able to boot up again. upshot is it is recognized in my bios as a boot option but goes to black screen regardless of configuration.
Now looking at it with Macrium,



... it looks soo different. (Now showing as Disk 2) It used to look like the Disk 1 here, with an NTSF active system file followed by NTSF primary, another NTSF primary for the recovery partition and then the unallocated remainder.

NOW it has (GPT btw) the FAT32 No Name Primary, the "unformatted!" primary, the NTSF basic data partition, the next NTSF recovery partition, and the NTSF newly allocated data partition.

What happened to my EFI system partition (that Disk Management still sees as such)? And where did this FAT32 part come from (which Disk management doesn't see at all)?
I swear all I did was format and allocate the last unused space using Disk Management.

These images are from the same instance in this device just using the different apps to view the same disks.

Any SSD cloning god(dess)s out there have insight?

:)

 

Unable to boot Windows after cloning it to SSD

Hi,



Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.



I understand that you are facing issues while booting the PC after cloning Windows to new SSD. I would like to know what happens when you try to boot the PC to desktop using SSD?



The reason you are not able to boot the PC is that the files required to boot Windows are still recognizing the HDD as the main drive. I would suggest you to try rebuilding the BCD files and see if you are able to boot the PC using
SSD.



Kindly follow the steps below to rebuild the BCD.

1. Create a bootable media and boot the PC using the media.
2. On the Install Windows screen, select Next >
   Repair your computer.
3. On the System Recovery Options screen, select
   Troubleshoot> Advanced options > Command Prompt.
4. Now type in the commands and hit enter: BOOTREC /FIXMBR
   
   BOOTREC /FIXBOOT
   
   BOOTREC /scanos
   
   BOOTREC /rebuildbcd
5. Restart the PC.

If the issue persists, please get back to us with the results of the troubleshooting steps to assist you further.



Regards,

Prakhar Khare

Microsoft Community – Moderator

 

Moving to SSD. Clone or not to clone?

Part of how I keep my SSD fast is to clone it to a platter drive, then clone back. You just want to make sure that you are only cloning teh used space, and not the empty space.


So, again, I isntall Windows to the ssd. Clone to platter drive, then clone back.

I am not sure why, but if I do not do the clone step, the drive's speed, and windows booting, decreases substantially within a week or so.

I am using a Corsair F60 SSD and a Western Digital 500AAKS as drives, and using the free version of Acronis that WD provides, if any of that matters. I am not sure, at this point.

 

Moving to SSD. Clone or not to clone?

I kinda agree with you, but on a wholr, do not. While I have done things a bit differently than this specific situation, by installing Windows directly to the SSD, and cloning after, my testing shows that there are no issues doing this, very little that can go wrong, provided your system is stable.

There are certain features that must be disabled in this situation, like auto defrag and such, but even with a fresh install to the SSD, you need to take steps to ensure that you SSD performs properly, regardless of how the data got there.

Arming yourself with a bit of knowledge can go a long way.

Installing the latest chipset driver, and the RST Tools, will ensure optimal performance of the SSD. but rather than taking my advice, I suggest the OP takes a look here:

http://blogs.dirteam.com/blogs/sand...7-and-ssds-to-clone-windows-or-reinstall.aspx

Installing The SSD - Install A Solid State Drive In Your Notebook | Tom's Hardware

Keep in mind, also, Digibucc, that many retail drives include software and such that very specifically is to be used to ttranser the OS from an existing mechanical drive to an SSD, and if there really was alot fo issues stemming from the cloning process, they would not have packages like that, simply to eliminate tech support costs. While not the optimal option, cloning is NOT a bad thing, as long as you take the nessecary steps.