Question Can’t boot from new m.2 ssd

[evermorex76]

Yes I can still install on the old drive and get into windows effortlessly. The new ssd also shows up in MyPc and is fully functional apart from the booting.

I want to give Macrium Reflect image restore a try tomorrow. I tried cloning it but I got an error because of different cluster sizes.

Cluster sizes don't matter, because a CLONE (or backup and restore) will make the clusters the same on the destination. SECTOR or block size is a different issue. If the two drives are not the same, virtually no cloning or backup software will work. (I.e., if one is 512-byte sectors and the other is 4K-native.) I only found one software, Casper, that would clone or make a backup and restore between the two sizes. I really don't understand WHY this is an issue, since most of the time this software is just copying data files, not bit-for-bit copying.

Because of this, pretty much all consumer drives, including the SN770 and SN850X (at least mine from last year) comes with 512-byte emulation enabled, even though the drive itself is physically 4K. I wanted to get the benefits (slight) of using 4K-native, and the only way to change it is sending SCSI/NVMe commands from an OS that supports it (Linux) so I had to do a Live USB boot to change it. Then cloning from my old SSD with 512-byte physical sectors to the SN850X meant finally having to use Casper. But I still had some boot issues.

This shouldn't be a problem if you're doing a fresh install. But maybe the software you tried did a clone anyway, but can't properly create the boot configuration due to the sector size difference, if in fact there is one?

Run this command in an elevated command prompt for the old and new drives (replace c: with whatever drive letter).

fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo c:

You'll see a section like this:
Bytes Per Sector : 4096
Bytes Per Physical Sector : 4096
Bytes Per Cluster : 4096

What does yours show for each drive? (Unfortunately I found this is not 100% accurate on every drive.)

 

[JayGau]

Possibly, but confirmation is needed.

He said he installed Windows multiple times (with only the new drive installed on the mobo) with the same result: the drive is not detected as a bootable drive. But if he reinstall Windows on the old drive and boots, the new drive is detected by Windows and is functional. So the drive is fine, but the mobo refuses to boot with it.

 

[JayGau]

Cluster sizes don't matter, because a CLONE (or backup and restore) will make the clusters the same on the destination. SECTOR or block size is a different issue. If the two drives are not the same, virtually no cloning or backup software will work. (I.e., if one is 512-byte sectors and the other is 4K-native.) I only found one software, Casper, that would clone or make a backup and restore between the two sizes. I really don't understand WHY this is an issue, since most of the time this software is just copying data files, not bit-for-bit copying.

I have been using Clonezilla to clone drives for years and as long as the destination drive is at least as big as the source it always works, no matter the drive type.

 

[evermorex76]

I have been using Clonezilla to clone drives for years and as long as the destination drive is at least as big as the source it always works, no matter the drive type.

You can clone even with a smaller drive by selecting the option to resize partitions proportionally. Not sure if that's new, but I just used it an hour ago. But that has nothing to do with sector size. As I said, basically all consumer drives emulate 512-byte logical sectors now because it's guaranteed to be compatible, but most drives have 4K physical sectors. But it's possible maybe to run across a drive that is configured with 4K logical sectors to match the physical. I tried Clonezilla with my SN850X move, and it would NOT do the clone from the old 512b drive to the 4K new drive after I changed it to use 4K logical.

 

[Bruur]

Cluster sizes don't matter, because a CLONE (or backup and restore) will make the clusters the same on the destination. SECTOR or block size is a different issue. If the two drives are not the same, virtually no cloning or backup software will work. (I.e., if one is 512-byte sectors and the other is 4K-native.) I only found one software, Casper, that would clone or make a backup and restore between the two sizes. I really don't understand WHY this is an issue, since most of the time this software is just copying data files, not bit-for-bit copying.

Because of this, pretty much all consumer drives, including the SN770 and SN850X (at least mine from last year) comes with 512-byte emulation enabled, even though the drive itself is physically 4K. I wanted to get the benefits (slight) of using 4K-native, and the only way to change it is sending SCSI/NVMe commands from an OS that supports it (Linux) so I had to do a Live USB boot to change it. Then cloning from my old SSD with 512-byte physical sectors to the SN850X meant finally having to use Casper. But I still had some boot issues.

This shouldn't be a problem if you're doing a fresh install. But maybe the software you tried did a clone anyway, but can't properly create the boot configuration due to the sector size difference, if in fact there is one?

Run this command in an elevated command prompt for the old and new drives (replace c: with whatever drive letter).

fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo c:

You'll see a section like this:
Bytes Per Sector : 4096
Bytes Per Physical Sector : 4096
Bytes Per Cluster : 4096

What does yours show for each drive? (Unfortunately I found this is not 100% accurate on every drive.)

Oh that’s strange because I kept getting an error due to incompatible disk sizes, 512/4096 like you mentioned.

I’ll try the code later when I can. I did however check the byte size in msinfo and my old ssd is 512 and the sn770 is 4096.

 

[Bruur]

You can clone even with a smaller drive by selecting the option to resize partitions proportionally. Not sure if that's new, but I just used it an hour ago. But that has nothing to do with sector size. As I said, basically all consumer drives emulate 512-byte logical sectors now because it's guaranteed to be compatible, but most drives have 4K physical sectors. But it's possible maybe to run across a drive that is configured with 4K logical sectors to match the physical. I tried Clonezilla with my SN850X move, and it would NOT do the clone from the old 512b drive to the 4K new drive after I changed it to use 4K logical.

Yeah I used that option in Macrium Reflect but it still gave me the incompatible disk error. I’m in the same boat, 512 to 4096.

 

[dev_cyberpunk]

I have been using Clonezilla to clone drives for years and as long as the destination drive is at least as big as the source it always works, no matter the drive type.

When you use CLonezilla, it loads a built in AHCI driver.

So switch it to IDE and plan not to use AHCI since you are not setting up a RAID.

One question is: does the SATA SSD drive have to be in AHCI mode or to rephrase this, does it boot in IDE mode.

 

[USAFRet]

You can clone even with a smaller drive by selecting the option to resize partitions proportionally. Not sure if that's new, but I just used it an hour ago. But that has nothing to do with sector size. As I said, basically all consumer drives emulate 512-byte logical sectors now because it's guaranteed to be compatible, but most drives have 4K physical sectors. But it's possible maybe to run across a drive that is configured with 4K logical sectors to match the physical. I tried Clonezilla with my SN850X move, and it would NOT do the clone from the old 512b drive to the 4K new drive after I changed it to use 4K logical.

CloneZilla didn't used to let you do that.
Target drive must be the same or larger than the source.

That's why I ditched it years ago, for Macrium.

 

[dev_cyberpunk]

CloneZilla didn't used to let you do that.

I haven't looked, but they could be using gparted or gtk-disks in the live boot to resize partitions.

to clone a drive in Linux its a simple

dd

command.

look at what its mount point is in Linux with the

lsblk

command

Example:

For a source drive mounted at /dev/sda and the target mounted at /dev/nmve0

sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/nmve0 bs=4M status=progress

With this you can use any Linux Live disk you want, but try to stick to something like an OS install like Ubuntu that is going to auto mount these disks. Clonezilla seems to be ok, but I never used it. Because I can take any Linux live install disk and clone in a terminal window.

I use block sizes of 4M because it clones quick, but you can leave out the block size option (bs=4M) so it will default to 4096 or 4K. It just take a little bit longer to clone.

 

[evermorex76]

Interesting that the SN770 is

Oh that’s strange because I kept getting an error due to incompatible disk sizes, 512/4096 like you mentioned.

I’ll try the code later when I can. I did however check the byte size in msinfo and my old ssd is 512 and the sn770 is 4096.

The old SSD is likely physically and logically 512, but the SN770 by default should be coming with 512 byte logical sectors, but physically it's 4096. I'm assuming that MSINFO reports the logical sector size, but right now I don't have anything installed that is in emulation mode. I forget MSINFO even exists; I don't think they've updated it for decades, so it doesn't even notice there is a difference between logical and physical.

You need to run the command with them installed internally, as well. As I just learned, USB adapters apparently abstract the sector size. Both of mine report 512 byte physical and logical sectors but I know the drives are 4K physical. So you can't be sure when using an adapter as some apparently report 4K even when the drive is only 512b.

 

[evermorex76]

With this you can use any Linux Live disk you want, but try to stick to something like an OS install like Ubuntu that is going to auto mount these disks. Clonezilla seems to be ok, but I never used it. Because I can take any Linux live install disk and clone in a terminal window.

Yeah but Clonezilla is "press enter, press enter, press enter, done", rather than needing to remember Linux commands, figure out the drive enumerations,and knowing how to start a terminal and all that, for people who don't use Linux and rarely do anything like cloning.

Clonezilla does not use GParted for its functions (from what I found in searching). As far as I could tell when it ran, it just resized the partition on the fly, just writing partition table data indicating the changed size at the end. I have also run into it not allowing you to use smaller drives in the past, so somebody must have finally decided it was dumb to not be able to do that. It may also still require a larger drive if you're doing an image-based backup/restore rather than a direct clone. Someone on AskUbuntu.com reported they couldn't do it with a smaller drive, 8 months ago.

 

[USAFRet]

CloneZilla became a problematic issue when people started going from HDD to a smaller SSD.
A decade+ ago.

No idea if that Large-Small has changed within CloneZilla.

 

[dev_cyberpunk]

Yeah but Clonezilla is "press enter, press enter, press enter, done", rather than needing to remember Linux commands, figure out the drive enumerations,and knowing how to start a terminal and all that, for people who don't use Linux and rarely do anything like cloning.

Well if you do something important, especially with someone's machine, you don't click click and done. Or risk the peril.

Plus if you really want to do anything like this, you need to get out of your comfort zone to learn. Otherwise you will doom yourself to keep asking others what to do.

 

[evermorex76]

Well if you do something important, especially with someone's machine, you don't click click and done. Or risk the peril.

Plus if you really want to do anything like this, you need to get out of your comfort zone to learn. Otherwise you will doom yourself to keep asking others what to do.

I shortened that from "read the screen, click on the option that applies to me, read the next screen, etc." Absolutely nothing wrong with using simple tools that do the job you need done, rather than deliberately choosing to use more complicated tools that require learning things that are totally inapplicable to you in any other part of your life. As a tech, I learned to use Linux for specific things, but I can't just "use Linux", and an average user who is just trying to clone a drive to replace it has zero need to learn how to use Linux when tools exist that can do it quickly and easily. Clonezilla is a middle-ground in usability between going into Linux manually or using a Windows-based GUI tool, since Clonezilla is keyboard- and text-based and may use terminology unfamiliar to users, but it provides a little more capability in some cases.

Anyone is doomed to asking someone else, in some way (be it a forum post, asking in real life, or reading a book or web article) how to do something for the first time, or how to get around a problem that they'll likely only ever need to get around once in their life. Nobody should be made to feel like they need to become a Linux guru just to cover any possible situations they might run into.

 

[Bruur]

I just tried using clonezilla and I completely cloned my old ssd to the new one! Worked in one go. So I want to thank you all for chipping in and helping me out! Glad it finally works!