Question Can boot HDD from usb, but not interal HDD

[123qweasdzxc]

Hello!

Question from a newbie. My old laptop's HDD broke so I was hoping to swap in a new one to salvage the laptop. I have a blank 500gb HDD hitashi, loaded a windows 10 system copy on it from another working laptop.

I am able to boot the hard-drive on with windows 10 (using usb-sata cable) with no problem. Though when I insert it as an internal HDD it states no bootable device found. I looked in the BIOS and it DOES recognize the hard-drive (shows name, serial number etc). I even tried booting as UEFI with no luck. Any help is appreciated thanks!

 

[RememberThe5th]

You have to install the windows when HDD is on laptop, cause the BOOT drive is actually bootmng patrition which may be missing.
If you dont see in computer managment->Disk managment system reserved patrition, youre missing the bootmng patrition as i said.

 

[Satan-IR]

Yes, as said, you have to install Windows while the drive is connected to the laptop and recognized as an internal drive.

That explains why it won't boot when connected as an internal drive. As RememberThe5th said probably the system doesn't find the boot manager files necessary to recognize the drive as a 'system' drive.

What exactly do you mean 'loaded a windows 10 system copy on it'? You copied an existing installation of Windows on the drive? Even if both systems/laptops have identical hardware this might not work even if there are bootmgr files on the drive which in your case I think is missing.

 

[123qweasdzxc]

Thanks for the help guys! I used a program EaseUS todo backup to create a system clone. Which I loaded onto my blank HDD via usb/sata cable.

I have a legal working copy of windows 10 from a new laptop but no windows disc or product key. How would you recommend getting a bootable windows on this new drive? Do I have to make a bootable windows flash drive and plug it into my old laptop with the blank HDD in as an internal?