Windows 10: No boot device found for cloned SSD on external USB drive

Trying to install a new Samsung 960 EVO M.2 1 Tb hard drive on my Dell Latitude E7470 laptop with Windows 10, but my Dell won't recognize the old drive in an external USB 3.0 case. I intended to boot up with the old drive in the USB case, then clone the old drive onto the new Samsung using Macrium software. I already cloned the old SSD onto an external drive using Macrium and it worked fine (I also tried booting off the cloned USB drive but got same result: "No Boot Device found.").

Here's what I've done:

Removed the old 128 Gb SSD (SATA) and installed it in a Startech USB 3.0 to M.2 enclosure. Installed the new Samsung (PCLe) in the Dell laptop computer.

Checked the Startech USB with old SSD drive installed on my desktop computer, and the desktop recognizes the drive and shows all my files.

The Dell laptop also does show the new Samsung hard drive (PCle), so both hardware installations seem to be OK.

Booted up the Dell, went into bios settings (F2) and changed from UETI to Legacy settings, then went to the one time boot menu (F10) and selected USB as the primary boot drive.

I get two messages when trying to boot using the USB with old SSD:

PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent
No Boot Device Found, press any key to reboot the machine

There's nothing wrong with the USB cable (confirmed with desktop test), but I tried another cable just to be sure (same result).

I do have the Windows 10 media, and can reload, then load Dell settings, software, files, etc., but I am trying to avoid this by just cloning the existing SSD onto the new one.

Help!

:)

 

Strange "C Missing" in Restore window

Results of testing Acronis clone and Image restore.

Boot SSD 1 – verified that there is no C Missing.

Created a second restore point for this drive.

Wipe SSD 2.

Clone SSD 1 to SSD 2 using Acronis 2016 booted from Rescue USB.

Boot from SSD 2.

C Missing exists on SSD 2

System Protection turned OFF for C System.

System Protection ON for C Missing.

Wipe SSD 2.

Image SSD1 to External backup drive using Acronis 2016 booted from Rescue USB.

Restore image from external drive to SSD2 with Acronis 2016 booted from Rescue USB.

Boot SSD2.

System Protection turned OFF for C System.

System Protection turned ON for C Missing.



My Results of testing;

Macrium clone creates C Missing folder on cloned drive.

Macrium Image restore does NOT create C Missing on imaged drive



Acronis clone creates C Missing folder on cloned drive.

Acronis image restore creates C Missing on imaged drive.



Turning Protection OFF on C Missing removes it from System Protection window.

Must turn protection on for C System.

These are my results - Others may have different results.

 

System and Reserved storage usage...

Hi,

I'm not sure you will have much luck with Cloning... Some programs do not function well when going that much smaller... But it wouldn't hurt to try...

It is not a good idea to leave a Windows installation on your original drive... It can potentially lead to boot errors\crashes...

You need to move as many of your personal user files to a external drive as possible...

Downloaded programs you wan to keep, pictures, data, and etc...

Part of the 360GB Used Space is probably something like 20GB of hidden system files...

When you do the cloning, simply hook up the SSD and launch the cloning program...

Look for an option to NOT INCLUDE the HP Recovery partition... It will be useless on the SSD anyway... it will not function on a smaller drive.

I prefer to do Cloning\Imaging when booting from the Cloning\Imaging Program...

Things usually seem to work out better that way...

After you clone to the SSD, unhook the other before booting to the SSD, at least for the first few times...

You may need to enter your machines BIOS and set the SSD as the first HDD Boot Device, and maybe change the first Boot Device as well... This depends on whether you want to set a DVD drive or USB Flash Drive as the first boot device...

Changing boot drives usually messes up those settings

 

Welcome to the forum. You need to boot from the imagine software DVD and then clone it that way you can't clone from within Windows only create a image

 

You are trying to boot a drive that was set up for UEFI booting in a UEFI set to boot from legacy BIOS. That's why it says no boot device found. Because you don't have any legacy BIOS boot devices connected - you have a UEFI boot drive connected.

Your drive is set up with GPT type partitioning for UEFI booting. Legacy BIOS requires MBR type partitioning and a partition marked as active. UEFI and Legacy BIOS modes also require different boot files to be in the system partition.

 

OK, now I know maybe why it's not booting. But..is there a fix? Can I reinstall the old hard drive in the laptop and reset it to Legacy booting? There must be a way I can transfer Windows 10, program software, and data to the new hard drive?

 

You install the new drive into the USB enclosure and leave the old drive in the computer. Install the cloning software in Windows on the old Drive. Then you clone the old drive to the new Drive. And then switch the two drives around.

 

This is not true - Macrium will happily clone from Windows to a new drive - done it many times.

 

MiniTool Partition Wizard will also clone from within the Windows that it is running from (as well as Macrium Reflect).

 

Aha. I actually tried that first, but...it seems that the Startech USB enclosure supports SATA M.2 SSDs, but not the PCIe M.2 drive. After installing the new Samsung in the USB enclosure neither my laptop or desktop recognized the hard drive. Tried today to find an enclosure that will convert a PCIe SSD to USB 3.0, but without success.

Just a comment to those commenting about Macrium and Windows: Macrium Free works fine. I tested it by cloning the old 128 Gb SSD to a Seagate Backup Plus external 2 Tb hard drive through the USB 3.0 interface using Windows 10. So that is not the issue. I reinstalled the old SSD in the Dell Latitude, and its boots up fine. When I remove the same hard drive and install it in the USB enclosure, and change the boot sequence to Legacy with USB drive first, the computer will not boot.

 

First, why are changing to Legacy? Why not just set it to boot UEFI USB first?

Second, make a bootable USB flash drive of Kyhi's recovery tools:
Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk

Boot the computer from that and it has Macrium Reflect on it and a couple other tools that you can use to clone. Then you can clone the old drive in the USB enclosure to the new drive installed in the computer.

 

I had to change to Legacy to be able to try to boot off the USB. Otherwise I could only boot off the hard drive (the new one, which was empty).

Yeh, I'll try making a bootable flash drive tomorrow. That might work, as I have multiple USB ports on the laptop. I can install the new Samsung, boot off a bootable flash drive (hopefully) on one USB port, then try to access the old drive through the Startech USB enclosure on another port. I've already installed Macrium and the Samsung Migration software on the old hard drive, but if this Kyhi's recovery tools has it as well, maybe I can get it to work. Tomorrow's project. Thanks!

 

Unfortunately, this was not successful, either!

Made a supposedly bootable USB flash drive from the link, but the laptop "could not find a bootable device" despite several attempts (tried both the x86 and x64 versions of the ISO file). USB was readable, showed all the files, but no boot.

So, tried another tack. Went on the laptop old SSD and created a Windows rescue USB drive. That booted up fine on both old SSD and new Samsung PLIe SSD, but I could not access anything else (like the other USB drive with the cloned files). Lots of repair and restore options, but no way to run Macrium or Samsung Data Migration software to transfer my old hard drive data.

So, what the heck, tried to restore Windows 10 onto the new Samsung SSD and that worked fine. So now, I had Windows on the the new Samsung SSD, updated the Samsung firmware, installed Macrium Reflect. Then tried to restore from the old SSD (mounted in the Startech external USB enclosure) to the Samsung installed in the laptop, but that didn't work---got a message that the data cannot be cloned while Windows was operating! Also tried the Samsung Data Transfer software, but found out that it only works to transfer from my new Samsung 960 to an external drive---not the other way around, which is what I need.

So with Windows already installed on the new Samsung SSD, I tried to boot onto the Kyhi recovery tool again, in hopes that I could somehow access the Reflect software that way, but still without success. Not a bootable device. Could still boot from USB with the Windows Recovery USB stick, but then cannot do anything with that as far as transferring data from the old SSD to the new Samsung. Tried copying the boot/win file from the Kyhi recovery USB to the the Windows recovery USB, but all that did was make the USB Recovery USB unbootable as well.

So at this juncture, having expended far, far more time attempting cloning (to try to avoid having to reload software and settings to the new Samsung SSD) thnt it would have taken to just go ahead and re-install all my software and transfer data files, it looks like that's exactly what I am going to have to do.

In short---failure! Still cannot figure out any way to get the data from my "old" SATA SSD to the new Samsung PCIe drive.

 

You likely are not making the USB flash drive correctly. It has to be formatted as FAT32, not NTFS. Then copy the files and folders from a mounted Windows 10 ISO file or mounted ISO file of Kyhi's recovery tools. That's all you have to do to make a UEFI bootable flash drive. Mark the FAT32 partition on the flash drive as active and it is bootable under legacy BIOS as well.

 

I don't know if your Dell is like some of the models where they have the SATA options set to RAID. On my system, that causes the system to not be bootable as a NVMe drive.

When i did mine i set the SATA to AHCI and installed cleanly on the drive to test. After that worked, i used a Win 10 recovery drive to reset the drive back to a factory condition. My system is new and came with Win 10, so it worked. But once you confirm the M.2 drive works, you can move on however.