- Oct 26, 2010
- 13
- 1
- 18,515
I am posting this in hopes it saves someone the massive pain in the butt I have endured for countless hours over the last two days.
The task at hand was simple on the surface: I was going to clone my 250 GB Samsung 850 EVO SATA SSD (Source) to a 1TB Intel 600p SSD NVMe M.2 form factor (Target) and have a faster and larger storage solution. The source SSD was running Windows 10 Home edition. My first approach was to simply clone and reboot, changing to the new M.2 SDD as the boot device.
Turns out you can’t just “do that”. I ended up with a BSOD with “INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE” and no way to get into safe mode or recovery console. Thus began my living hell...
First up, do not use the Intel Migration Tool. It won’t work. And I don’t mean it wouldn’t work for me - Intel Online Support straight up told me it wouldn’t work. The problem lies in the fact we are dealing with different hardware (SATA vs. NVMe), and the Migration Tool is a customized Acronis POS solution that will crash and burn. Every. Single. Time. even with the “workaround patch”. Intel told me to do a clean Win10 install and reinstall everything I have ever bought. Ummmm...no. I didn’t like that idea, and I had seen some people had somehow managed to make it work, but none of their methods were working for me.
I tried the basic cloning method with multiple free cloning tools - AOMEI Backupper, Macrium Reflect, and EaseUS Todo Backup, all with the same inaccessible result, except I could never get EaseUS to successfully clone the drive. Some said the paid versions would work, but I’m not the kind of person to pay money for a one-off drive migration.
Ultimately this is what worked for me:
1. Disconnect all other SATA devices except boot device, remove M.2 SSD and create a restore point.
2. Use the MS Media Creation Tool to make a recovery USB drive.
3. Shut down; insert M.2 SSD; boot up and clone drive with the sector by sector option using Macrium Reflect (or hell, it may have been AOMEI Backupper Disk Clone, both are good programs. I restarted this whole process at least four times, and none of the logs match up with times I know I did it. I don’t know when/if I reset system time after clearing CMOS - see below). It took about 40 minutes to clone 232 GB.
4. Immediately shut down after cloning, and disconnect SATA drive. (If you boot up at this point, you should get the inaccessible boot device BSOD)
5. Insert USB recovery drive, and select it as boot device in BIOS
6. When I got into recovery console, I tried to restore, but it said there were no restore points. I tried to repair windows, but that said it didn’t work. I then cycled through booting from the USB again, and just clicked “Continue to Windows” and boom - it took me straight in to the M.2 SSD OS install.
7. Remove the USB, reboot, and everything should work like a charm. (At least it did for me)
8. Go into Disk Management and expand the partition to take in the unallocated space left from the cloning process.
Some notes:
The Intel SSD uses the native MS NVMe driver. If you are trying this method with another type of NVMe drive, you should probably install the driver on the source drive before migrating to the new one.
I don’t know if the failed restore and repair attempts did anything or not, but I left those actions in just in case. It's not like I’m going to wipe my drive and start over just to see if I can repeat the results. lol
I tried all the DISKPART and BCDEDIT solutions from various forums - total waste of time for me.
All MoBos are not created equal. Make sure your BIOS is up to date. I was doing this on an ASUS Z170 Pro Gaming/Aura MoBo running BIOS v3501 x64. At one point, I screwed things up so much I couldn’t get anything to boot and had to short the CLRTC pins to reset CMOS just to get back in to the BIOS. Aside - ASUS online support for mobos was closed for some reason, but I did get display support and a warranty RMA to return my monitor that has a big squished inside between the screen and LCD. That’s gotta be a first. lol
I had CSM enabled before and after cloning with Boot Device Control set to UEFI only and UEFI driver first for all other options. Secure Boot state was enabled, but I never figured out how to turn it off in my BIOS anyway. The M.2/SATA6G_1 Configuration was set to Auto before and after cloning. OS Type was set to Windows UEFI mode...but I honestly don’t remember changing that from “Other OS”. I don’t know if it happened on its own, or if I did it during the fog of war in trying every setting known to man - it was 2 am - but I suspect I probably changed it.
I’m not a regular here, so I’ll try to keep an eye out for questions, though issues like this usually get closed as old and are forgotten before anyone finds them and actually needs to ask a relevant question. lol.
Hopefully this saves at least one person a massive headache.
The task at hand was simple on the surface: I was going to clone my 250 GB Samsung 850 EVO SATA SSD (Source) to a 1TB Intel 600p SSD NVMe M.2 form factor (Target) and have a faster and larger storage solution. The source SSD was running Windows 10 Home edition. My first approach was to simply clone and reboot, changing to the new M.2 SDD as the boot device.
Turns out you can’t just “do that”. I ended up with a BSOD with “INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE” and no way to get into safe mode or recovery console. Thus began my living hell...
First up, do not use the Intel Migration Tool. It won’t work. And I don’t mean it wouldn’t work for me - Intel Online Support straight up told me it wouldn’t work. The problem lies in the fact we are dealing with different hardware (SATA vs. NVMe), and the Migration Tool is a customized Acronis POS solution that will crash and burn. Every. Single. Time. even with the “workaround patch”. Intel told me to do a clean Win10 install and reinstall everything I have ever bought. Ummmm...no. I didn’t like that idea, and I had seen some people had somehow managed to make it work, but none of their methods were working for me.
I tried the basic cloning method with multiple free cloning tools - AOMEI Backupper, Macrium Reflect, and EaseUS Todo Backup, all with the same inaccessible result, except I could never get EaseUS to successfully clone the drive. Some said the paid versions would work, but I’m not the kind of person to pay money for a one-off drive migration.
Ultimately this is what worked for me:
1. Disconnect all other SATA devices except boot device, remove M.2 SSD and create a restore point.
2. Use the MS Media Creation Tool to make a recovery USB drive.
3. Shut down; insert M.2 SSD; boot up and clone drive with the sector by sector option using Macrium Reflect (or hell, it may have been AOMEI Backupper Disk Clone, both are good programs. I restarted this whole process at least four times, and none of the logs match up with times I know I did it. I don’t know when/if I reset system time after clearing CMOS - see below). It took about 40 minutes to clone 232 GB.
4. Immediately shut down after cloning, and disconnect SATA drive. (If you boot up at this point, you should get the inaccessible boot device BSOD)
5. Insert USB recovery drive, and select it as boot device in BIOS
6. When I got into recovery console, I tried to restore, but it said there were no restore points. I tried to repair windows, but that said it didn’t work. I then cycled through booting from the USB again, and just clicked “Continue to Windows” and boom - it took me straight in to the M.2 SSD OS install.
7. Remove the USB, reboot, and everything should work like a charm. (At least it did for me)
8. Go into Disk Management and expand the partition to take in the unallocated space left from the cloning process.
Some notes:
The Intel SSD uses the native MS NVMe driver. If you are trying this method with another type of NVMe drive, you should probably install the driver on the source drive before migrating to the new one.
I don’t know if the failed restore and repair attempts did anything or not, but I left those actions in just in case. It's not like I’m going to wipe my drive and start over just to see if I can repeat the results. lol
I tried all the DISKPART and BCDEDIT solutions from various forums - total waste of time for me.
All MoBos are not created equal. Make sure your BIOS is up to date. I was doing this on an ASUS Z170 Pro Gaming/Aura MoBo running BIOS v3501 x64. At one point, I screwed things up so much I couldn’t get anything to boot and had to short the CLRTC pins to reset CMOS just to get back in to the BIOS. Aside - ASUS online support for mobos was closed for some reason, but I did get display support and a warranty RMA to return my monitor that has a big squished inside between the screen and LCD. That’s gotta be a first. lol
I had CSM enabled before and after cloning with Boot Device Control set to UEFI only and UEFI driver first for all other options. Secure Boot state was enabled, but I never figured out how to turn it off in my BIOS anyway. The M.2/SATA6G_1 Configuration was set to Auto before and after cloning. OS Type was set to Windows UEFI mode...but I honestly don’t remember changing that from “Other OS”. I don’t know if it happened on its own, or if I did it during the fog of war in trying every setting known to man - it was 2 am - but I suspect I probably changed it.
I’m not a regular here, so I’ll try to keep an eye out for questions, though issues like this usually get closed as old and are forgotten before anyone finds them and actually needs to ask a relevant question. lol.
Hopefully this saves at least one person a massive headache.
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