Cloned SSD boot issue

[Dan_Eastvale]

Well, no joy, even with a clean windows install and using the commands recommended by L4d. All I've done is to verify that the problem isn't with the computer or windows.

I have a ticket in with Samsung. They may still have a solution, but not very hopeful. Don't know it I want to try a 3rd party clone program, but are there any suggestions? Is Macrium Reflect 8 and Minitool worth the time to run?

With 30+ hours into this, I'm very temped to go with another company's drive

I cloned my son's 500 gb drive to a 4tb this morning in 26 minutes with Macrium Reflect 8. With 3.0 Gen 2 C connection and an $10 NVME external enclosure. Macrium is Very simple and does it in about three steps.

Works with slower, older 3.0 as well. Just takes awhile longer. Just start it , walk away and let it finish. Minitool extends the partition to the drive capacity instantly


Simple and complete instructions

https://youtube.com/watch?v=yNgMl5zK09E&si=DVZTfj9NFEw9Os-v

[ibanezfoo]

Did you switch the controller from AHCI or RAID?

[kenl]

Thank you for the information Dan. That is on my short list to try next when I get back to this on Saturday.

ibanezfoo, no, haven't touched the controller settings

[bayrooster]

Hi, was your laptop set to "legacy" or UEFI boot mode when the old HDD was installed? It might not see it as a bootable device now because the BIOS setting for the type of boot is different than it was previously (the cloning process could have made it UEFI bootable only, for example). Switching from AHCI to SATA mode in BIOS for the drive interface itself can cause a formerly bootable drive to stop booting. Lastly, if you have multiple boot devices attached to and/or installed in your laptop, you might need to manually set which drive is the primary boot drive in BIOS (I have this option in my Asus mobo's UEFI BIOS config).

Also an in-place upgrade using the Windows OS install DVD or ISO image can resolve this issue by determining what driver to install to properly recognize the drive as bootable, despite the BIOS settings for legacy versus UEFI.

[kenl]

It is in uefi boot mode, hp's default.

There is only one bookable drive in this very basic laptop.

No luck with a clean windows install.

Thank you for all of the input and segregations. This is sort of maddening.

[Dirtlaw]

I am far, far from being an expert. I do have a sense of danger, however. Bottom line, Windows no longer meets my needs. My path is Linux open source. Again, I am not an expert. Just a simple man.

[ibanezfoo]

It is in uefi boot mode, hp's default.

There is only one bookable drive in this very basic laptop.

No luck with a clean windows install.

Thank you for all of the input and segregations. This is sort of maddening.

You might want to check that. Just today at work one of the CAD computers was failing to boot and I had the user take it to the help desk guys. They found pretty quick the CMOS had reset itself and the drive controller switched from AHCI to RAID and Windows would not boot. They flipped it back and boom works fine.

[ibanezfoo]

I am far, far from being an expert. I do have a sense of danger, however. Bottom line, Windows no longer meets my needs. My path is Linux open source. Again, I am not an expert. Just a simple man.

Your instincts serve you well

[bayrooster]

You might want to check that. Just today at work one of the CAD computers was failing to boot and I had the user take it to the help desk guys. They found pretty quick the CMOS had reset itself and the drive controller switched from AHCI to RAID and Windows would not boot. They flipped it back and boom works fine.

That reminds me... Also worth checking to see if there's a BIOS firmware update available for the laptop. Some of these problems could be hardware compatibility related, and computer manufacturers often fix those issues through BIOS/firmware updates.

[kenl]

Update

Well, on top of everything else that went before, tryed cloning with Macrium Reflect 8, tryed another 870 Evo, and tryed a WD Blue ssd. Nothing cleared the restart non-boot.

Looks like this computer's hardware or bios are incompatible with a ssd. It's time to pull the plug on this project.

Thank you for all of the help everyone.

[Dan_Eastvale]

Yeah, should be straightforward since it's legacy MBR to MBR. No GPT or UEFI issues since it's only 1tb. Since it boots from cold start.

Maybe get and flash the current BIOS from the manufacturer's web site.

[kenl]

Bios is up to date. I think it is just a very cheap laptop that is missing something in its hardware coding.

Talked the owner. He would like me to reinstall the original HD, and strip out as much bloatware as I can. As it is, I've reduced the boot time from well over 10 minutes to around 2 by just prepping the dive for cloning with updates and cleanups. He is happy with that.

Again, thank you for all of the help everyone.

[high_revs]

i used mini-tool partition wizard a few times w/o issues. first moving form a dell laptop hdd to use uefi and repurposed the intel irst (intel repaid recovery tech etc etc) and used it as a bootable and os drive) then cloned a fujitsu hdd to sdd and lastly kid's hp laptop from hdd to ssd also.



even if the sata specs are different, i figure the bios would just pick the lowest speed sata. my dell laptop had this problem where prior a bios allowed sata 3 but a later update (due to many crashes) lowered it to sata 2. really odd that uefi is on and it's not recognized.



were all other drives removed to be safe? and really just isolate it out to the drive being installed even iwth fresh install? woudl it be that you're installing a nvme drive but it's only m.2 sata compatible?

[67Cuda]

After trying to reinstall my drive using Easeus and failing, to just backing up my data and doing clean installs from now on.

[Dan_Eastvale]

I upgraded my kid's PC with a larger system C 1 TB NVME Drive (Crucial) last week

Used Clonezilla and it worked fine.

I took his old system NVME M2 drive (Samsung 970 pro plus 500GB) and tried cloning my 500 GB Samsung SATA SSD to his 970 to use as my system drive. Used Clonezilla.

Appeared to clone fine but would not boot in my system.

Resorted to the Samsung Data Migration. It was faster and booted fine... Weird. Even though both drives were Samsung it shouldn't make a difference.

Hit and miss