There is an unusual occurrence related to the recent Windows 11 Pro image backup and restore process.
There is an unusual occurrence related to the recent Windows 11 Pro image backup and restore process.
Hello everyone.
I think I’ve resolved the problem, but I’d like to recount my experience to better grasp what occurred and why it happened. My system features several SSDs—three M.2 drives on a Gigabyte X570 Extreme motherboard and another three SATA SSDs connected. I frequently use EasusToDo to back up my Windows 11 drive, either to prevent data loss or for an upgrade. It has proven very useful over the past few years.
Currently, my main C drive resides on a new 8TB WD Black SSD M.2 4.0 PCIe card. I also have a 2TB Gigabyte M.2 SSD 4.0 PCIe drive for secondary storage. My goal was to swap these two so Windows would run on the smaller 2TB drive, leaving the rest unused. Since I only used over 1TB of the 8TB for booting Windows, much of it went to waste. If I had added random data to the 8TB drive while Windows was running, the backups would have needed to be performed on a larger storage device—a process that’s quite cumbersome.
I already use a NAS for general data backup. Thus, I aimed to make the 2TB Gigabyte drive my primary boot drive and keep the 8TB for regular storage.
I backed up all data from the 2TB drive to my NAS, formatted the entire device, and then transferred the Windows OS image from the 8TB drive to the NAS. Next, I created a bootable EasusToDo image from the 8TB drive and loaded it onto the 2TB drive via a USB stick. After successfully booting from the smaller drive, I rebooted, ensured the Gigabyte was set as the main boot device in BIOS, and confirmed the OS loaded correctly.
I then used the Windows command prompt to wipe and delete all partitions on the 8TB drive, formatting it as a single partition for general use. Windows 11 Pro became fully functional on the 2TB drive, and the WD Black 8TB was formatted as standard storage.
After completing these steps, I performed a reboot and everything worked smoothly. However, during the next restart, something changed. When I powered off and restarted, I encountered a blue recovery screen and failed to boot into Windows. In BIOS, everything appeared normal—my Gigabyte drive was still set as the primary OS boot device.
I couldn’t restore Windows from a USB drive, even after using it for installation. I attempted a fresh Windows 11 install but received a warning stating my PC didn’t meet the requirements. I verified that TMP was enabled in BIOS, which it was.
This led me to try booting back into EasusToDo and repeating the process. Eventually, the backup image loaded correctly, and Windows booted normally from the 2TB drive. The original 8TB WD Black remained functional as a general storage device.
I completed several tasks afterward, and everything functioned properly. Then I restarted the PC, which resolved the issue. I’m now trying to understand why the recovery screen appeared after the initial backup succeeded. Was there something left on the 8TB drive that interfered with the boot process? Perhaps related to TMP or partitions? It seems the problem arose only after I wiped those partitions and started using the smaller drive.
I hope this explanation clarifies the situation. Thank you for your attention!
That's what I would have done before, but I wanted to prevent disassembling the system during this process. To eliminate all other drives, I had to remove my graphics card and take out several screws to access the M.2 drives, which were hidden behind metal heat sink plates on the board. The first time I booted up on the 2tb drive, everything worked smoothly without removing any drives. Once I switched to Windows from that drive, I proceeded to delete all partitions on the 8tb drive using the command prompt. This was done while the system was still running Windows on the 2tb drive. After a successful boot and formatting of the original C drive (the 8tb one), the recovery screen appeared. Then I reinserted the image file onto the 2tb drive, and it is now functioning properly.
Following the initial boot from the cloned drive, the original drive must be removed physically. Otherwise, the cloned drive may become corrupted and you'll need to start over with cloning. It's likely that the bootloader was still pointing to the old operating system drive. When attempting to boot from the new drive, the system would continue loading from the previous one. This process relies on the software used for the wipe operation; certain programs need a restart before changes are fully applied.
You ran a Windows command prompt to remove partitions and turned the whole drive into an unallocated space, then configured it as a regular storage drive.