Windows fails to start due to a newly cloned SSD issue.
Windows fails to start due to a newly cloned SSD issue.
Hi everyone, I bought a fresh 2TB NVMe SSD to swap in for the existing 525GB unit. I've used Clonezilla, Acronis 2014, and even the free trial of Macrium Reflect, but everything behaves the same. After installing, the PC pretends to boot but keeps spinning with dots, then restarts a few times before attempting an automatic fix—never fixing anything. The new drive appears correctly in BIOS and the first boot slot lists it properly. My motherboard is a Gigabyte Z270N-Gaming 5, and the old drive was a Crucial 525GB M.2 while the new one is a PNY XLR8 2TB NVMe. Despite using a USB 3.0 NVMe card, the cloning process seems to fail consistently. Any suggestions? Edited July 25, 2023 by WillL84 Added more info
I recently made clones of M.2 drives but they didn’t connect with the docking station, so I had to install one in the second M.2 port. If you have a PCIe card designed for M.2...
Use the Windows Media Creation Tool to generate a bootable USB drive, then apply a repair installation to address any remaining issues from the cloning process.
Unfortunately it's an ITX board and only has one pcie slot. There's another m.2 but it's for the Wi-Fi card and points straight to the GPU so the long SSD wouldn't fit anyways lol I'll give that a shot this afternoon, thanks for the suggestion
I understand your point about the CPU having an integrated GPU. That means the GPU isn't required for this task.
The recovery process failed. I also attempted to configure the new SSD using another block size, but it didn’t work either. The Wi-Fi port is oriented toward the CPU, not the GPU, which is why it’s not connecting properly. It seems this device won’t fit in there.
Ok so I have no idea what happened but now it works. Last night I tried formatting the new SSD with 512, 4k and default sector sizes. Nothing worked. So I resigned myself to the fact that I'll need to do a clean install. Put the original SSD back in, made a Windows installer USB drive, played for a bit then shut it down. Turned it on this morning and I was greeted with the "no boot device installed" garbage. WTF? Reboot, go into BIOS. Drive shows up but not as a boot option. Ok. Strange. Guess I'm doing a fresh install this morning. Swap the new drive back in and turn it on. I missed the boot screen to select the boot device to boot from the installer USB. Never thing I know it's sitting at the Windows login screen. What the hell?! Shut it down and rebooted it a few times to make sure it wasn't a fluke and it seems to be working fine now. I didn't change a single thing from last night to this morning. I just shut it down normally. No idea why my old drive won't boot now but the new one will when nothing changed