Windows 10: Restored Macrium Reflect 6.3 image will not boot 'boot disk not found'

Windows 10 Pro, Toshiba Satellite upgraded from OEM Win 8. Created system image w/ Macrium and restored it to a new second HD(HD2). Both drives had a lot of partitions due to Win 8 upgraded to Win 8.1 and back to Win 8 prior to upgrade to Win 10. The laptop will have either HD1 or HD2 installed. I restored the image, later, to HD2 and had no trouble, as a test. Able to reinstall HD1 with no trouble. Replace HD1 with HD2 and no trouble. I had to have the original HD1 wiped, so I made a new Macrium image of HD2, first. After the HD1 wipe and then installing HD2 with no changes to it, it would not boot. I restored the Macrium image to HD2 and it would not boot. I have a Windows Recovery USB, and used it to delete all partitions on HD2. Again, I restored Macrium image to HD2 and will not boot. I can access HD2 when it is connected to a different PC w/ a USB adapter, and get to all on it's C: drive.
In the meantime, I wanted to do a fresh install of Win 10 to the wiped HD1. The only way I was able to do that from a Win 10 DVD was to first delete all partitions on HD1. That was successful. I want to end up with the image on HD2, because it is a 7200RPM drive, whereas HD1 is 5400
NOW MY QUESTIONS
1. On HD2: Was the original Win 8 boot partition required to boot Win 10? (system partition, MS parlance)
2. Does the boot partition need to be the first partition? (that would mean the old Win 8 par. is needed)
3. If the Win 10 boot partition can work on it's own, does it need to be the first? and is there a way to make it so?
4. Since my newly loaded HD1 works, can I copy all of the C: drive from HD2 to HD1 ?

Thank you to anyone who has read all the way through this! I hope I explained all.

:)

 

Windows Boot Sector corrupted

Does your HDD installation still work? If so then this would be the correct procedure to follow:

• Use Macrium Reflect (or a similar tool) to create an image of your installation.
• Disconnect the HDD, connect the SSD.
• Boot the machine with the Macrium Reflect bootable rescue flash disk.
• Restore the image to the SSD.

In general: When restoring images you must make sure at the first reboot to connect the new disk only. If both disks are connected then you risk ruining both installations.

 

Boot disc System Image Recover not possible from USB

What I'd do is not bother with WIndows imaging in this case, since it frequently won't recover to a new hard drive anyway. Instead plug back in the old hard drive and create an image using the best free app

Macrium Reflect is a Free and Easy To Use Backup Utility along with it's Rescue Disk, then swap out the hard drives and boot the disk to restore to it, fully automated and failure-free.

Restoring a System image from Windows

 

Possibly, or perhaps an updated version that Win10 had placed there. Whatever the problem, you may well be able to repair it using your recovery drive,

Startup Repair - Run in Windows 10

 

I don't think I tried that. We shall see.

 

The best thing to do, in my opinion, in your situation is to do the clean install of Windows 10 to a completely wiped hard drive. Delete all the partitions on it, click on the unallocated space left, click next, let Windows 10 set up everything it needs to. Sounds like you have already done that.

Boot from a Macrium Reflect rescue drive. Restore only the Windows partition (C: drive) over the top of the new Windows 10 partition. Under the restore menu in Macrium Reflect is a utility to Fix Windows Startup Problems. After you restore the old Windows 10 partition over the top of the new Windows 10 partition, run that utility.

If you need to restore the functionality of the Windows Recovery Environment menu (what you get when you hold the shift key when you click restart), that can be fixed easily with a couple of command lines.

 

My most recent attempts: HD2, fresh Win 10 pro install, deleted all partitions. Boots. booted macrium disk, restored just c: partition. no boot. ran the fix boot problems utility. no boot. restored all partitions. no boot. ran fix utility. no boot.

 

"...can I copy all of the C: drive from HD2 to HD1..." If you're including your OS folders and files, I do not know of a way to simple-copy them to another hard-drive; however, you can make a full image of your OS partition on the 1st hard-drive and then restore same onto the 2nd hard-drive.

 

that was done and tested. After that, the first drive had to be wiped. The second drive, which ran fine with the restored image of the first drive, was reinstalled and would not boot. I have not been able to restore any of 3 images of the original first drive, onto either the first or second drive.

 

Ouch! I didn't realize the images you made from source are not restorable on the target.