May 14, 2020
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Hello. I just recently bought an M.2, and after installing it I had cloned my ssd that has the OS on it. After I cloned it I tried to wipe the old drive to be able to reuse it. However I couldn’t seem to do that, and my computer kept booting from my previous drive. Eventually my computer stopped booting from both drives, and I had a 3rd drive which had the OS on it. I managed to get on the 3rd drive, and wipe both of the drives. Then I cloned the 3rd drive onto the m.2 so it would have the OS. Everything seemed to work fine. Until I had an update just now. Now it seems to be stuck on the loading screen that happens after the screen to boot into the bios. Eventually it will boot up and work fine. However it’s booting from an M.2 it shouldn’t be taking 5+ minutes. If anyone has any tips or knows how to help that would be great.

p. s. If I try to fresh start it won’t let me and says something like no recovery media or something like that.
 
Solution
these aren't wiped drives, you should be able to remove all the other partitions on the drives and not have all the extra recovery partitions
mQ9R4xw.png


to actually wipe them,
in windows go to settings/update & security/recovery
under advanced startup, choose restart now button
this restarts PC in a blue menu

Pick troubleshoot
Pick advanced
Pick Command Prompt
Type diskpart and press enter

Type list disk and press enter

This will show the list of drives currently attached to PC, make note of the drive number of the drive you want to wipe

If Disk 1 is the drive you want to clear, type select 1) and press enter. A message will confirm it is selected

Warning: Diskpart Erase/Clean will...

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
you are meant to remove the cloned drive right after the clone operation. Not leave it in the PC with the os still on it. that is the problem with the 1st two.

so you still have a cloned drive in with m,2? Can guess its booting off it then.

Can you take a screenshot of disk management as I wonder what its booting off.
right click start
choose disk management
take a screenshot of next window showing all the columns.
upload to an image sharing website and show link here

sounds like its booting off another drive still.
 
May 14, 2020
14
0
10
you are meant to remove the cloned drive right after the clone operation. Not leave it in the PC with the os still on it. that is the problem with the 1st two.

so you still have a cloned drive in with m,2? Can guess its booting off it then.

Can you take a screenshot of disk management as I wonder what its booting off.
right click start
choose disk management
take a screenshot of next window showing all the columns.
upload to an image sharing website and show link here

sounds like its booting off another drive still.
I believe i got it to boot off the m.2 because it took around 20 seconds or so to boot after i did all that.

View: https://imgur.com/a/wo35N2e

the H drive is just an external drive doesnt have os or anything on it just has like movies and stuff.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
EFI partition is the boot partition. It depends on what motherbaord you have as to how it finds the EFI. Some bios just let you put the m.2 (or whaetever) as top of list while others use WIndows Boot Manager which has a record of the location of the efi recorded in it. Every GPT drive on earth has a unique id so it is recorded in the WIndows Boot Manager. But if you have 5 EFI on the PC, it might not find the right one right away.

did you wipe them after this screenshot? which of those is the m.2?
 
May 14, 2020
14
0
10
EFI partition is the boot partition. It depends on what motherbaord you have as to how it finds the EFI. Some bios just let you put the m.2 (or whaetever) as top of list while others use WIndows Boot Manager which has a record of the location of the efi recorded in it. Every GPT drive on earth has a unique id so it is recorded in the WIndows Boot Manager. But if you have 5 EFI on the PC, it might not find the right one right away.

did you wipe them after this screenshot? which of those is the m.2?
How do i fix this then?
 
May 14, 2020
14
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Humor me.
" it should" does not count.

In your screenshot, I see 5 physical drives with lots of stuff on them.
Okay. I unplugged them all. It booted really quickly. It showed me the Lock Screen for half a second then immediately went into a blue screen saying it ran into a problem (stop code memory management?) then it restarted and booted fine. Booted within 25 seconds even.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
it could just be the update process that is confused by all the clones. Ideally you should remove windows from all but 1 drive and use rest as storage. removing the efi just stops them from booting again, you may still have windows on other drives wasting space.
 
May 14, 2020
14
0
10
it could just be the update process that is confused by all the clones. Ideally you should remove windows from all but 1 drive and use rest as storage. removing the efi just stops them from booting again, you may still have windows on other drives wasting space.
even though i formatted each drive wiping them? (Prior to the screenshot)
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
these aren't wiped drives, you should be able to remove all the other partitions on the drives and not have all the extra recovery partitions
mQ9R4xw.png


to actually wipe them,
in windows go to settings/update & security/recovery
under advanced startup, choose restart now button
this restarts PC in a blue menu

Pick troubleshoot
Pick advanced
Pick Command Prompt
Type diskpart and press enter

Type list disk and press enter

This will show the list of drives currently attached to PC, make note of the drive number of the drive you want to wipe

If Disk 1 is the drive you want to clear, type select 1) and press enter. A message will confirm it is selected

Warning: Diskpart Erase/Clean will permanently erase/destroy all data on the selected drive. Please be certain that you are erasing the correct disk.

Once you sure its right disk, type Clean and press enter

The Command Prompt window will display the message "DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk".

you need to do that for each drive. Close out of the Command Prompt window by clicking the red X in the upper right hand corner. restart PC

you will need to recreate partitions on the drives in disk management as this wipes them all.
 
Solution