Cloned Windows to SSD, but not booting?

[OpFor]

Hi guys,

I have a 256 GB Transcend MTS600 M.2 NGFF SSD. Along with this, I'm using a USB 3.0 SSD enclosure from MyDigitalSSD to allow me to swap things out and have a portable drive (and because my laptop doesn't have a port for SSDs, despite being relatively new and expensive).

I managed to clone Windows 8.1 to the SSD with MiniTool Partition Manager. Worked great.

In order to get the USB adapter to be recognized by the BIOS boot manager, I had to disable UEFI/enable legacy support, no problem. Now that I can get the device recognized, I'm good to go, right? Nope. When I select the device, all I get is a black screen with a flashing underscore (basically a non-usable terminal screen).

What have I done wrong? Do I need to wipe my other drive, disable it, what...? I simply do not understand why this does not work. The SSD is formatted as a primary drive in NTFS (MBR), and the HDD is formatted in NTFS as a primary drive as well (GPT).

Computer is an HP Envy 17t-k000 laptop with an i7 4510U, GTX 850, and a Hitachi 1 TB hard drive.

Thanks.

 

[USAFRet]

Windows does not like booting the OS from a USB.
The install routine from USB? Yes. The actual OS, No.

Put that drive internal and see what happens.

 

[OpFor]

Windows does not like booting the OS from a USB.
The install routine from USB? Yes. The actual OS, No.

Put that drive internal and see what happens.

It doesn't have an internal slot AFAIK (tried removing optical drive, nothing, not sure about HDD, but probably not), therefore, I need to be able to boot from the USB, unfortunately. Is there really any easy way to do this, or would I really just be better off installing a clean copy with Windows PE, or something else?

 

[OpFor]

It might also be worth it for me to mention that I did not format this drive before cloning my 8.1 installation to it. I've never had to do anything like this before, so excuse my noobiness, but is it necessary?

 

[USAFRet]

OK, I'm still not quite sure what you're looking to do here.

You have an HDD, optical drive, and a new 256GB M.2 SSD.

What do you want the end state to be? The OS on the SSD?
Does your machine have an M.2 port?
If so, can it boot from that?

 

[OpFor]

I figured this out, never mind.

 

[pwnchubr]

I figured this out, never mind.

Can you please tell me what you did to remedy your problems? I am having similar problems and it's driving me nuts. Thank you.

 

[USAFRet]

I figured this out, never mind.

Can you please tell me what you did to remedy your problems? I am having similar problems and it's driving me nuts. Thank you.

Please create a new post with your specific issue.

Thanks.

 

[pwnchubr]

I figured this out, never mind.

Can you please tell me what you did to remedy your problems? I am having similar problems and it's driving me nuts. Thank you.

Please create a new post with your specific issue.

Thanks.

It's the same, that's why I asked here.

 

[USAFRet]

I figured this out, never mind.

Can you please tell me what you did to remedy your problems? I am having similar problems and it's driving me nuts. Thank you.

Please create a new post with your specific issue.

Thanks.

It's the same, that's why I asked here.

Well...the OP may not be back. He hasn't posted anything since this.