Question Can I boot from one drive and perform an in-place upgrade on a different drive?

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Imacflier

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Jan 19, 2014
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My boot drive is corrupted. Ironically WHILE I was preparing to set up my backup process.

So, I need to boot from a USB drive and then run an in-place upgrade on my original boot drive.

Will I have a problem in doing so?

TIA,

Larry
 
From Windows 11 Pro TO Windows 11 Pro, which permits me to keep all settings and programs. The drive in question is a 4TB m.2 nvme. The drive is detected when trying to boot from it, blue screens and gives error "INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE". I successfully boots into bios.
Corruption occurred WHILE I was cloning the drive in preparation for setting up Macrium Reflect, ironically enough!

The cloning process was interrupted by a bios update delivered by HP and INSISTED upon! The bios definitely received some changes since at least SOME of my bios settings were changed.

I think those are all the relevant details.

Larry
 
Imacflier said:
From Windows 11 Pro TO Windows 11 Pro, which permits me to keep all settings and programs. The drive in question is a 4TB m.2 nvme. The drive is detected when trying to boot from it, blue screens and gives error "INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE". I successfully boots into bios.
Corruption occurred WHILE I was cloning the drive in preparation for setting up Macrium Reflect, ironically enough!

The cloning process was interrupted by a bios update delivered by HP and INSISTED upon! The bios definitely received some changes since at least SOME of my bios settings were changed.

I think those are all the relevant details.

Larry
Click to expand...
Still not clear.

You were trying to clone from one drive to another?

What "upgrade" is involved here?


But...it seems the source drive is hosed. Rendering any 'upgrade' or clone...ineffective.
 
I was originally creating a clone of my system drive.

"In-place upgrade" is one of those odd Microsoft terms. It basically overwrites the OS, while retaining all settings and programs. Sort of like the old WIN97 -> XP days.

Yeah, it seems unlikely, even to me, that this will work and I will have to root around for an earlier clone.....but if it does work it will give me a perfectly contemporaneous and complete working copy....certainly worth a try since all it will cost me is a bit of time! It is MUCH faster than a clean install, too. I did it once before in a last ditch effort to fix a Windows Update problem and it worked slick
 
Imacflier said:
I was originally creating a clone of my system drive.

"In-place upgrade" is one of those odd Microsoft terms. It basically overwrites the OS, while retaining all settings and programs. Sort of like the old WIN97 -> XP days.

Yeah, it seems unlikely, even to me, that this will work and I will have to root around for an earlier clone.....but if it does work it will give me a perfectly contemporaneous and complete working copy....certainly worth a try since all it will cost me is a bit of time! It is MUCH faster than a clean install, too. I did it once before in a last ditch effort to fix a Windows Update problem and it worked slick
Click to expand...
"in place upgrade" would be going from one version to the next.
eg: Win 10 to Win11.

A Restore, to go back to a non-borked install, is something different.


But in any case...your drive appears to be hosed.
 
Imacflier said:
Damned rare to find USAFret in error, but take a look at this link: ....
Click to expand...
Well, yes.

But Not entirely sure of what you were trying to do.

Instructions from that link requires you to create a System Image Backup (which it does not seem you can do), and then boot from a USB.
And then, run that based on the original drive, not a new one. Which you seemingly can't do, because the original drive seems to be hosed.


You can't "Keep personal files and apps" when going to "a different drive" as you said in your title.
 
Well it seems I am having (Probably age related) difficulties communicating today.

The process IIRC that I used the last time I did this mislabelled "upgrade" is to download an ISO of Win11.

Mount the ISO (I can skip the download part since I have a Win11 Installation Flash Drive available.

Run set up and select the option "keep settings and programs"....and stand back!

I cannot recall if running setup in a windows 11 install permits choosing a target drive? If it does not, I am screwed. If it does, all will depend on how much of the drive is corrupt: just the OS, or everything.
 
Imacflier said:
Well it seems I am having (Probably age related) difficulties communicating today.

The process IIRC that I used the last time I did this mislabelled "upgrade" is to download an ISO of Win11.

Mount the ISO (I can skip the download part since I have a Win11 Installation Flash Drive available.

Run set up and select the option "keep settings and programs"....and stand back!

I cannot recall if running setup in a windows 11 install permits choosing a target drive? If it does not, I am screwed. If it does, all will depend on how much of the drive is corrupt: just the OS, or everything.
Click to expand...
OK.

That works if 'upgrading' on the same drive. Or reinstalling. Or "fixing".

I do not believe you can choose a different drive for this.
And even if it did, that would require the source drive to be 100% functional to read from. Which yours does not seem to be.
 
Imacflier said:
The cloning process was interrupted by a bios update delivered by HP and INSISTED upon! The bios definitely received some changes since at least SOME of my bios settings were changed.
Click to expand...
I rather think that this is your problem. It's likely that the filesystem on the drive has been corrupted - hopefully it's not the drive itself that was corrupted!

You might try (from the WinRE installation system) running a chkdsk /f on the drive to see whether that can fix the filesystem corruption. There is an outside chance of data loss there though.....
 
To quote Dr. Frankenstein: "ITS ALIVE!!!"

After downloading the latest ISO, mounting, and running a "repair installation" AKA "In-Place Upgrade" the 4TB nvme drive is back in operation, with all settings and applications intact! It has been cloned for point-in-time backup and I am proceeding to install new spinning HDDs, transferring content and setting up Macrium Reflect!

WHEW!!

Thanks to all who commented, and especially USAFret for his Macrium setup!

Larry
 
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