[SOLVED] M.2 & SSD woes

Apr 3, 2021
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Experiencing strange disk behavior where the PC will not boot to the M.2 drive, if it is selected as the boot drive in the BIOS. If I disable it in the BIOS, it boots.
It's a 'Samsung 950 Pro M.2 512GB PCI-E 3.0 SSD'. MB is a new ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4.
With the M.2 disabled in the BIOS and booting/working, I then tried to add an SSD. The SSD (Samsung 860 Evo series 2.5" 500GB SATA III) gets recognized in the BIOS, but the system will not boot, and will not recognize the M.2 drive in the BIOS at all. Both drives were clones; the M.2 drive was cloned from a bootable SSD as an upgrade (SSD to M.2, more capacity, SSD replaced with a high capacity SSD) using Acronis.
Appreciate any suggestions.
 
Solution
Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Seeing how you need to be on Windows 10 and the thing with Windows 10 is that you need to have Windows Boot Manager as the primary boot device within BIOS in order for the OS to even work, I think that's what you need to do.

Also, did you reinstall the OS on the M.2?

What BIOS version are you on for your motherboard?
Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Seeing how you need to be on Windows 10 and the thing with Windows 10 is that you need to have Windows Boot Manager as the primary boot device within BIOS in order for the OS to even work, I think that's what you need to do.

Also, did you reinstall the OS on the M.2?

What BIOS version are you on for your motherboard?
 
Solution
Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Seeing how you need to be on Windows 10 and the thing with Windows 10 is that you need to have Windows Boot Manager as the primary boot device within BIOS in order for the OS to even work, I think that's what you need to do.

Also, did you reinstall the OS on the M.2?

What BIOS version are you on for your motherboard?

I do not get the boot manager option in the Bios, just the drive itself shows up; the Bios is version 870F10/8701021. We did not reinstall Windows after the clone.
 
Hi USAFRet,
The M.2 was cloned from a 128 GB SSD - SATA drive, which was on a different system yes. We upgraded the PC and cloned the disks over to newer, larger disks.
A new motherboard really really needs a fresh OS install on the desired drive.

SATA -> NVMe
Old mb -> New mb

Too many changes.

Bite the bullet and do a full OS reinstall on this new system.
Do this OS install with ONLY the desired drive connected.
Reconnect others later.

 
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Reactions: Richard1439
Wanted to close the loop on this, re-installing windows resolved the issues. Problem was cloning the OS drive from SSD to a larger M.2 (NVME) using Acronis True Image. All other disk copies worked, so I'll continue using the product, just wanted to advise of this should anyone else be considering a disk upgrade like this one.
 
Wanted to close the loop on this, re-installing windows resolved the issues. Problem was cloning the OS drive from SSD to a larger M.2 (NVME) using Acronis True Image. All other disk copies worked, so I'll continue using the product, just wanted to advise of this should anyone else be considering a disk upgrade like this one.
Non-OS drives are not a problem.
Cloning from one OS drive to another in the same system is generally not a problem.
Crossing systems with a clone - Problem.

Glad it all worked out in the end.