Cloning HDD to SSD Ni

BillH

Hi. The cloning process is generally pretty easy, but something went wrong. Idea was to clone the HDD to an SSD and then remove the old drive. Something happened in the process, and the PC will only boot with both drives in the chain. The boot process is apparently pulling some data from the boot sector of the HDD. When I try to boot with the HDD removed, it boots to BIOS and no further. I've spent hours on the chat with EaseUS (the vendors of the cloning software) and they have been no help. They suggest I try to boot into ACHI, but I see no option to do that. I suspect that Intel Optane memory might be a factor in preventing booting with ACHI. The PC is not as stable as it should be, and some apps are misbehaving. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Bill

PowerSpec_MikeW

@BillH

Sounds like the boot sector is only on the old drive and wasn't copied correctly. Whether you're booting UEFI or legacy is also a factor here. Open disk management with both drives installed and post a screenshot please.

BillH

Here's a screenshot. They appear to be the same, but a closer look finds differences -- /system32 folders are different size.

Diskmgmt.png

PowerSpec_MikeW

@BillH

We're going to need to repair or rebuild the boot sector from some windows installation media. Before we start, can you still boot with the original HDD installed by itself?

BillH

Unfortunately no. Boots only to BIOS.

PowerSpec_MikeW

@BillH

Alright. Lets gather some additional information first then. From an elevated command prompt type: bcdedit /enum

Post what you see. Also post a screenshot of msconfig, boot tab.

BillH

BCDEdit.png

msconfig.png

Here are the two screenshots you requested. Thanks for your help with this Mike.

--Bill

PowerSpec_MikeW

@BillH

It's pointing at the bootloader on C:. So the new drive, and if you're not sure, check the properties.. Is Disk 0 with the C:\Windows Partition and the old drive is Disk 1 with the D:\Windows partition, correct?

You can rewrite a bootloader. If you're able to boot to the new drive, even though the bootloader is still set on the old drive, it sounds like the clone was successful and that shouldn't really be an issue. Just going to be a matter of mounting the system volume on Disk 0 and targeting it at the new Windows Partition. I'll caution you that I would backup your data first and be ready for a clean install as a worst case scenario. None of what we're going to do should leave us in a worse situation, you should still be able to just throw back in the original drive and still boot, but there's always a risk when you're tampering with your boot sector data so be prepared for that.

Create bootable windows media to work from: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Disconnect the original drive, boot to the flash drive you made a bootable version of windows on from the above link.

Shift + F10 to open command prompt.

DISKPART

list disk

select disk # (this would be the new drive)

list vol (Note the drive letter for your main windows partition, should be C but may be different)

select vol  # (We need to find the system partition, it will be fat32, type system)

assign letter=s

bootsect /nt60 C: /force (change C: if it was something different in step 7)

Try: bootrec /rebuildbcd (this may error out due to permissions, continue on)

Last one: bcdboot C:\Windows /s S: /f UEFI (change C: if it was something different in step 7)

Explanation: bootsect is going to write the master boot code to the drive. Bootrec will try to rebuild the boot configuration data, but it should still be there. If it's corrupt and we still have a problem, we can delete and it and rewrite it. bcdboot is going change the configuration data to point at the C: drive on the EFI boot. It seems this is what your new drive is missing.