Question Boot Manager is on the wrong drive ?

[dennisalt]

Put a larger HD in my wife's Mac, so I re-formatted her old one, cloned my HD and upgraded my old laptop with it.

Turns out it wasn't over-full drive causing the slow running as the Apple store claimed, it was the drive failing. So now my laptop is running super slow, and I can't get it to boot on the original drive. I get a blue-screen if the cloned drive isn't in. Cloning also left 693GB unallocated space (unusable?)

This thread seems to be a very similar issue, but it didn't work. No errors, just still won't boot on the orginal drive, I assume I translated something to my system incorrectly (or this wasn't the fix for me).

[SOLVED] - Boot Manager is in another drive | Tom's Hardware Forum

My HD info:

https://imgur.com/no698Ym

View: https://imgur.com/no698Ym


Any recommendations are much appreciated.

 

[TerryLaze]

and I can't get it to boot on the original drive.

Is the original drive in its original place? If you swapped connectors it could have caused this.
If disk 1 in the pic is the original disk then it is listed as the second boot device and bios uses the first boot device to load the boot manager from.
If the bios has the setting you can also just change boot order and that should also fix it.

Cloning also left 693GB unallocated space (unusable?)

You would have to move or delete the 1Gb third partition, then you would be able to extend the main (acer) partition to use the extra space, doing this on a failing drive would take very long and could fail at some point.

 

[Misgar]

You would have to move or delete the 1Gb third partition, then you would be able to extend the main (acer) partition to use the extra space

When faced with this scenario, I use EaseUS Partition Master to move the Recovery partition to the end of the disk, whilst maintaining its current size.
https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/

This leaves a chunk of unused disk space immediately after the main Windows C: drive. I open Windows Disk Management and extend the C: drive to use the extra space. Job done in roughly 3 minutes.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/w...nt/extend-a-basic-volume?tabs=disk-management

As with any risky disk management, back up all important files to another device, before proceeding.


"So now my laptop is running super slow, and I can't get it to boot on the original drive."

Ignoring the failure to boot from the original drive using the method outlined in the other thread (which you could probably fix by reinstalling Windows) can I ask why you're still using a hard disk and not a solid state drive, assuming your laptop uses SATA, not IDE?

I've been upgrading old laptops from SATA hard disk to SSD since 2015 and it can make a big difference to start up times and general tasks. An SSD upgrade can breathe new life into a 10-year old laptop.

The more expensive SATA SSDs with DRAM cache are best for boot drives, e.g. Samsung 870 EVO, but even a lowly Patriot P220 SSD without DRAM cache is faster than a 2.5" hard disk.
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Factor-Intelligent-Magician-Software/dp/B08PC43D78
https://www.amazon.com/Patriot-P220-Internal-Solid-State/dp/B0BS9W92M1

 

[SkyNetRising]

So now my laptop is running super slow, and I can't get it to boot on the original drive. I get a blue-screen if the cloned drive isn't in.
Cloning also left 693GB un-allocated (unusable?)

Delete 1GB recovery partition and then you'll be able to extend C: partition.
(execute from elevated command prompt)

diskpart​

list disk​

select disk 0​

(select 931GB disk)​

list partition​

select partition 4​

(select 1GB recovery partition)​

delete partition override​

select partition 3​

(select c: partition)​

extend​

exit​

As for bootloader - you can fix it with bcdboot command.
(execute from elevated command prompt , regular command prompt will give error on last step)

diskpart​

list disk​

select disk 0​

(select 931GB disk)​

list partition​

select partition 1​

(select 100MB efi system partition)​

assign letter=H​

exit​

bcdboot C:\windows /s H: /f UEFI​

​

Last message should be "Boot files created successfully".

After that you can remove old 238GB disk.
Make sure first boot device in BIOS is set to Windows Boot Manager on 1TB disk.

 

[dennisalt]

Is the original drive in its original place? If you swapped connectors it could have caused this.
If disk 1 in the pic is the original disk then it is listed as the second boot device and bios uses the first boot device to load the boot manager from.
If the bios has the setting you can also just change boot order and that should also fix it.


You would have to move or delete the 1Gb third partition, then you would be able to extend the main (acer) partition to use the extra space, doing this on a failing drive would take very long and could fail at some point.

Yes, original drive is in it's original space. There's a spot for a 2nd drive, so I added it because it was available.

Changing the boot order did not fix it, I see I missed that in my original post, and wasn't clear with my original ask: I want to change the boot order, so that I can remove the "new" (failing) drive.

 

[dennisalt]

When faced with this scenario, I use EaseUS Partition Master to move the Recovery partition to the end of the disk, whilst maintaining its current size.
https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/

This leaves a chunk of unused disk space immediately after the main Windows C: drive. I open Windows Disk Management and extend the C: drive to use the extra space. Job done in roughly 3 minutes.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/w...nt/extend-a-basic-volume?tabs=disk-management

As with any risky disk management, back up all important files to another device, before proceeding.


"So now my laptop is running super slow, and I can't get it to boot on the original drive."

Ignoring the failure to boot from the original drive using the method outlined in the other thread (which you could probably fix by reinstalling Windows) can I ask why you're still using a hard disk and not a solid state drive, assuming your laptop uses SATA, not IDE?

I've been upgrading old laptops from SATA hard disk to SSD since 2015 and it can make a big difference to start up times and general tasks. An SSD upgrade can breathe new life into a 10-year old laptop.

The more expensive SATA SSDs with DRAM cache are best for boot drives, e.g. Samsung 870 EVO, but even a lowly Patriot P220 SSD without DRAM cache is faster than a 2.5" hard disk.
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Factor-Intelligent-Magician-Software/dp/B08PC43D78
https://www.amazon.com/Patriot-P220-Internal-Solid-State/dp/B0BS9W92M1

I wasn't clear with my original ask: I want to change the boot order, so that I can remove the "new" (failing) drive.

I used this drive because it was available. We replaced it in my wife's Mac because the Mac store mis-diagnosed her slow running as a full HD. We put a larger drive in it and it worked, turns out this drive was failing (and probably too full).