Question M.2 W10 storage swap

[32532827]

Some foreword first.

Today, a failure with the login screen gives me a single window with the title "LoginUI.exe" has given me a CMD style prompt that asks for my login credentials. Upon doing so, I get a message that reads "The System Event Notification Service service failed the sign-in. Function could not be executed."

I've tried to get into safe-mode, but that cannot be accessed with F8 anymore. There is a way to enable the option upon boot with a BCDedit CMD line, as they seem to work for 7/8/8.1 versions. All other means of accessing safe-mode require getting to the W10 desktop and using the start-menu, but I cannot even access that.

I don't have any system images, and I don't know if I can access safe-mode any other way with the W10 USB.

That leads me to the question:

My W10 desktop has a single m.2 sata drive for boot. Since I cannot completely boot W10, I cannot use any drive cloning software. One option I think I have is to purchase an M.2/USB enclosure, install the M.2 drive, and try to pull files off of it with my laptop. My question is, should that even work at all, and is there something that would prevent me from accessing the M.2?

I have a follow up question if the above cannot work.
Thank you.

 

[mdd1963]

if the drive is now corrupted/glitched/failed to the point of not booting, it's quite possible a clone could successfully duplicate the failure, leaving you in the same boat...and, certainly if WIndows will not boot, the option to now use Windows-live cloning software is out...


You might try creating a LinuxMInt LiveCD image on USB (requires a functioning computer to accomplish, of course), and trying booting/operating from that, so you can see if any needed data is available on the drive...(There is a Hiren's WIn10PE-based installation that lets you boot from USB to try to get to/access your drive as well)

Linux Live CD (Mint) https://linuxmint.com/download.php
Hirens WIn10 PE https://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

If you don't need to recover data from the drive, you can create WIn10 install media, and simply delete your existing partition, and reinstall, selecting 'I don't have product key'; if previously activated Win10, it will sync back up as activated once complete...

If determined to try cloning, you can use CLonezilla, which, although ugly and text menu based Linux, works well...

 

[32532827]

To update, should this thread become indexed and someone else might have the same problem, my impatience got the better of me. You need not have to panic buy an M.2 enternal drive if you have other drives as an option.

I removed the M.2 drive, and reused a 9 year old WD 160gb SATA HDD. Despite its age and agonizing 5400rpm speed, I went through the motions of installing a fresh copy of W10 on the old drive to facilitate the copy. After that, I had shut down the computer, reconnected the M.2, and changed the boot order in the UEFI to prioritized the HDD. All that remained was to detect and mount the M.2, which W10 did anyway, and to copy the files to the HDD. At this time I made another copy of the files to another external drive, as I wasn't going to leave everything to chance with the HDD should it fail too.

It didn't, and as of this writing I've removed the HDD, changed the boot order back to the M.2, deleted the partitions, formatted, and reinstalled W10 back on the M.2. The external drive brought all the files back with the exception of 34 Chrome tabs, but it's been rationalized that it's better to loose a mess of redundant tabs than to loose 2 years of work.

The take away message is the same: invest in backup hardware, and back up often. As for me, I may need to divest myself of W10 sooner rather than later.

 

[USAFRet]

The take away message is the same: invest in backup hardware, and back up often. As for me, I may need to divest myself of W10 sooner rather than later.

Indeed:

What is your backup situation at home? What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong... forums.tomshardware.com