Question Help with booting from cloned SSD

[gangsteroyster]

I'm building a new PC for my parents, but they have quite a bit of stuff on the hard drive of their current computer, so I thought the best way to handle it would be to clone their hard drive to an SSD. That seemed to go smoothly (running chkdsk on the old drive got me past the initial errors in the cloning process) but after getting the new system put together, I can't boot from the cloned SSD. Everything is correctly recognized in the BiOS but once exiting, I get a message about the computer not finding a bootable device or something like that. I'm not sure where to go next.

Some details--I'm attempting to move from a 2TB HDD to a 960GB SSD, because after having their current computer for eight years they've only used up 350GB of space. The old hard drive has four partitions:

1. "System Reserved" 100 MB (System, Active, Primary Partition)
2. "C:" 1837 GB (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)
3. [not named] 450 MB (Recovery Partition)
4. [not named] 25 GB (OEM Partition)

I only cloned the first two of those to the new drive, thinking I could save space and might not need the others, but that might be where I've gone wrong. The two partitions of the SSD are:

1. "System Reserved" 100 MB (Primary Partition)
2. "D:" 894 GB (Primary Partition)

I notice the stuff in parenthesis are different between the two drives, and not having "System" in that first partition might be a problem? Anyway, if worst comes to worst I'll probably just wipe the SSD, install Windows 10 on it, and manually migrate all the files and programs from the hard drive, but I'd like to avoid that if possible. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[USAFRet]

Incompatibilities here.

New PC and cloning to a new drive.

One or the other, probably can't do both. And absolutely can't do it in one movement.


Usually, a "new PC" needs a clean install of the OS, on a drive in that system.
Sometimes it works otherwise, but a clean install is strongly recommended.

Cloning between 2 drives in the same system can be done, but not how you did it.


So...what are the old parts and the new parts?
This has a huge effect on whether this cloning operation is a viable way forward.

 

[gangsteroyster]

Well, this is apparently more involved than I thought and I probably should have done some more research first. Just from what you said it sounds like what I already tried probably won't work, and if there's any way to make it work, it would be a huge pain. So maybe just scrap all of that.

Would it be at all possible to format the SSD, do a clean Windows install onto it, and then clone just the "C:" partition from the old hard drive onto the SSD so it would have all of my parents' files and programs? (It's probably clear that I'm a huge noob with this stuff haha but hopefully I'll learn something.)

Oh also, the hard drive is a Seagate Barracuda and the SSD is a Kingston A400. Let me know if you need information about the other parts. They're both AMD systems.

 

[popatim]

A400... cloning was never going to work to begin with. This is because of the different sector sizes the two drives use.

The old OS trying to boot on completely new hardware often leads to failure. Depending on the new build's hardware, there may not be drivers for the old OS to run anyways. Intel doesn't supply drivers for it's newer hardware for OS's older then W10. AMD does but its extra work to get it going.

What is the new & old hardware and which OS is it currently running.

Migrate programs typically means reinstalling them so make sure you have all the activation codes before you begin.

 

[gangsteroyster]

cloning was never going to work to begin with.....

That confuses me a bit because the cloning process (using Macrium) completed with no errors, and I could see the complete copy of the old C drive on the new SSD. The only issue was booting from it.

As for the rest of what you said, the old computer is running Windows 10, but the hardware in it is quite old. It's running I believe an A8 3850 processor with DDR3 memory and such. I can get more details if it's important.

But I think I need to change my question at this point to be: what is the right way to handle this situation? Because cloning seems like the wrong way. Again, the objective is to get as much as possible from my parents' old computer onto a new drive and system. What's the simplest/best way to do that?

 

[slingsrat]

That confuses me a bit because the cloning process (using Macrium) completed with no errors, and I could see the complete copy of the old C drive on the new SSD. The only issue was booting from it.

A bit confusing, drives don't have sector sizes, they are allocated when you format the disk. You can choose from many sector sizes using windows. Cloning a drive will match the sectors as well.

Does the new cloned SSD work in the old computer in place of the original HDD?

 

[USAFRet]

What's the simplest/best way to do that?

The best way to get the new system up and running is a clean install on a blank drive in that new system.
This includes all the drivers, applications, everything.

Once it is fully running...then you can copy over your personal data.

100% running, and devoid of years of built up cruft from the old Win 7 install.

 

[gangsteroyster]

The best way to get the new system up and running is a clean install on a blank drive in that new system.
This includes all the drivers, applications, everything.

Once it is fully running...then you can copy over your personal data.

100% running, and devoid of years of built up cruft from the old Win 7 install.

As tedious as that sounds, it definitely makes sense. I was hoping that cloning would be a nice shortcut and I wouldn't have to re-download a bunch of software using my parents' terrible internet but no dice, apparently. Lesson learned: ask the knowledgeable people first before making a plan.

Thanks for everyone's input, I think I'll just take this advice and scrap the cloning idea entirely.