My OS on my SSD went back to being the OS for my old HDD (keeping all SSD files intact EXCEPT the OS)

[Malaxus]

I dont know what happened, but about a year ago, I successfully migrated HDD to SSD, all went well, etc (SSD was the C drive. However, today, I installed a new motherboard, changed some boot options so it would boot, and everything worked.

My SSD was my C drive, which was not a concern. However, I went unplugged my HDD (old C drive), turned on my PC and went into BIOS and decided to boot up my PC with only the SSD.

However, as I do that, Windows Boot Manager pops up saying that there are no Windows OS within the disks. I plug my HDD in, and instead of booting up from SSD, it boots up from my HDD (which now holds the C main OS for some reason), whilst the SSD has all the files EXCEPT the OS. How the hell did this happen and how can I fix it without deleting/erasing any [strike]memory[/strike] data from my SSD?

Can someone please help, truly.

 

[USAFRet]

Didn’t boot up to windows, instead it said (only the SSD was plugged in) insert media with proper boot, etc

Oh.
I had assumed that it fully worked from your previous step.

 

[Malaxus]

Didn’t boot up to windows, instead it said (only the SSD was plugged in) insert media with proper boot, etc

Oh.
I had assumed that it fully worked from your previous step.

I mean its progress, right? What do you suggest now?

 

[Malaxus]

Didn’t boot up to windows, instead it said (only the SSD was plugged in) insert media with proper boot, etc

Oh.
I had assumed that it fully worked from your previous step.

Hold up, if I make this new System reserved active it might work. Also, will making that partition active delete my files/make them inactive in the SSD?

 

[USAFRet]

Didn’t boot up to windows, instead it said (only the SSD was plugged in) insert media with proper boot, etc

Oh.
I had assumed that it fully worked from your previous step.

Hold up, if I make this new System reserved active it might work. Also, will making that partition active delete my files/make them inactive in the SSD?

Yes, you need to make that partition Active.
No, it should not affect data on other partitions.

 

[Malaxus]

Didn’t boot up to windows, instead it said (only the SSD was plugged in) insert media with proper boot, etc

Oh.
I had assumed that it fully worked from your previous step.

Hold up, if I make this new System reserved active it might work. Also, will making that partition active delete my files/make them inactive in the SSD?

Yes, you need to make that partition Active.
No, it should not affect data on other partitions.

It says this, " Setting this as an active partition may make the other primary partitions on this disk become inactive" What does this mean, exactly?

 

[USAFRet]

Didn’t boot up to windows, instead it said (only the SSD was plugged in) insert media with proper boot, etc

Oh.
I had assumed that it fully worked from your previous step.

Hold up, if I make this new System reserved active it might work. Also, will making that partition active delete my files/make them inactive in the SSD?

Yes, you need to make that partition Active.
No, it should not affect data on other partitions.

It says this, " Setting this as an active partition may make the other primary partitions on this disk become inactive" What does this mean, exactly?

1 Active partition per physical drive.

 

[Malaxus]

Didn’t boot up to windows, instead it said (only the SSD was plugged in) insert media with proper boot, etc

Oh.
I had assumed that it fully worked from your previous step.

Hold up, if I make this new System reserved active it might work. Also, will making that partition active delete my files/make them inactive in the SSD?

Yes, you need to make that partition Active.
No, it should not affect data on other partitions.

It says this, " Setting this as an active partition may make the other primary partitions on this disk become inactive" What does this mean, exactly?

1 Active partition per physical drive.

And must I copy and paste the bootmgr from old hdd C: to the system reserved?

 

[USAFRet]

And must I copy and paste the bootmgr from old hdd C: to the system reserved?

If you clone that whole partition, it would include its contents.

I would have tried the Repair function noted above, before messing with these partitions.

 

[Malaxus]

And must I copy and paste the bootmgr from old hdd C: to the system reserved?

If you clone that whole partition, it would include its contents.

I would have tried the Repair function noted above, before messing with these partitions.

Yea, the partition didnt work. How would I do the repair function?

 

[Malaxus]

And must I copy and paste the bootmgr from old hdd C: to the system reserved?

If you clone that whole partition, it would include its contents.

I would have tried the Repair function noted above, before messing with these partitions.

I mean, the new system reserve is good, but doesnt boot back to SSD. The old HDD C: is Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition) whilst the SSD is only Healthy (Primary Partition). Could this mean anything?

 

[karenjoly]

why not consider my questions above ?

 

[USAFRet]

Yea, the partition didnt work. How would I do the repair function?

Assuming you have a USB or DVD to boot from...
Power off
Disconnect ALL drives except the SSD in question.
Boot up from the USB or DVD, and see what Troubleshooting says.

 

[Peter Martin]

Also usually a motherboard swap requires a re-installation of windows unless it’s the exact same motherboard that it was

 

[Malaxus]

You say you " put the boot options to UEFI, if that did anything ,then bam, windows boot manager for SSD."

What precisely do you mean by "windows boot manager for SSD" ?

What are the boot drive descriptions in UEFI ? Legacy and UEFI, and UEFI for all 3 for an ASUS BIOS

What are the partition styles for the HDD and SSD ?
When you change to UEFI only GPT drives will boot.
So is the HDD a GPT and the SSD an MBR disk ? I have a Samsung evo 850 1tb, I read that its GPT
If so, then you could switch back to the way it were. How would I though?
But you should do as suggested and delete drive letter "I"

My bad, I replied within the quote

 

[Malaxus]

Yea, the partition didnt work. How would I do the repair function?

Assuming you have a USB or DVD to boot from...
Power off
Disconnect ALL drives except the SSD in question.
Boot up from the USB or DVD, and see what Troubleshooting says.

If I just switch motherboards, will this problem persist? Or if I plug the SSD into a new PC without this old HDD?

 

[karenjoly]

Try switching the SSD boot mode to legacy.

 

[Malaxus]

Try switching the SSD boot mode to legacy.

I did, no luck.

For this problem to happen, I switched my Powerdownaftershutdown to 1 in the registry, forced shut down (in the SSD C, unplugged the cables only from my old HDD, not from the board, and rebooted, resulting in this whole mess.

 

[karenjoly]

Time to cut your losses. I would transfer all the data to a quiet drive , the D will do . Then reinstall windows to the SSD ensuring all other drives are disabled. Then you can clone to the HDD and keep that current as a back up system or use the HDD purely as a storage drive and keep an image there for back up, again keeping it current. Blow away all other partitions and use those drives as you like.

 

[Malaxus]

Time to cut your losses. I would transfer all the data to a quiet drive , the D will do . Then reinstall windows to the SSD ensuring all other drives are disabled. Then you can clone to the HDD and keep that current as a back up system or use the HDD purely as a storage drive and keep an image there for back up, again keeping it current. Blow away all other partitions and use those drives as you like.

Can I back up the whole SSD data? Or just the documents, pics, etc?

 

[karenjoly]

All your personal stuff, including saved games, the steam directory ,etc. Boot to the HDD, copy and paste to D, shut down, disable all drives but the ssd and install windows using the latest install files from the windows 10 download site.The installation will allow you to delete all existing partitions on the drive as part of the process. Ensure that UEFI is enabled.

Next time, check with us before SCREWING WITH THE REGISTRY (lol).

 

[Malaxus]

All your personal stuff, including saved games, the steam directory ,etc. Boot to the HDD, copy and paste to D, shut down, disable all drives but the ssd and install windows using the latest install files from the windows 10 download site.The installation will allow you to delete all existing partitions on the drive as part of the process. Ensure that UEFI is enabled.

Next time, check with us before SCREWING WITH THE REGISTRY (lol).

You think I could copy and paste/replace the stuff on the old HDD with the SSD stuff and just migrate/clone basically the SSD (but its in the HDD) = basically migrating SSD with SSD, and I can go back to normal, yes?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Oh boy. Such a mess there.
You have 3 drives with bootloaders in the system.

• 2TB drive (disk 0)- with UEFI bootloader,
  1TB old HDD (disk 1) - with legacy bootloader,
  1TB new SSD, cloned from HDD (disk 2) - with legacy bootloader.

To fix bootloader on disk 2 (so you can boot from it), execute bcdboot command from elevated command prompt:

• bcdboot h:\windows /s g:

After this you should be able to boot from 1TB SSD alone. Test it.
If this is successful, then delete unneeded bootloader partitions - 100MB partition on disk 0, 100MB partition on disk 1 (Disk Management will not allow this, you'll have to use diskpart instead).

 

[Malaxus]

Oh boy. Such a mess there.
You have 3 drives with bootloaders in the system.

• 2TB drive (disk 0)- with UEFI bootloader,
  1TB old HDD (disk 1) - with legacy bootloader,
  1TB new SSD, cloned from HDD (disk 2) - with legacy bootloader.

To fix bootloader on disk 2 (so you can boot from it), execute bcdboot command from elevated command prompt:

• bcdboot h:\windows /s g:

After this you should be able to boot from 1TB SSD alone. Test it.
If this is successful, then delete unneeded bootloader partitions - 100MB partition on disk 0, 100MB partition on disk 1 (Disk Management will not allow this, you'll have to use diskpart instead).

BRO LITERALLY ONE STUPID STEP AND I FIXED IT.

Three days lost because of this, thank you so much my man, you have no idea what you did, I am truly grateful for this my man.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Great. Glad it worked out.