[SOLVED] New SSD won't boot after cloning from HDD

Jan 3, 2023
24
1
15
I bought recently an SSD hard drive (Crucial MX500 1TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5-inch 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal SSD CT1000MX500SSD1). My previous one was a ST3500413AS ATA Seagate Barracuda 512 GB HDD from the year 2012 or earlier.

I cloned the drive using software provided by the SSD card (Acronis True Image). It took 14 hours to finish. I unplugged the old hard drive and plugged in the new one. The startup opened up the automatic repair which didn't succeed.

Moreover, I plugged the old drive back in and also the new one through USB. For some reason I decided to try and boot it up once again through USB but it didn't work. Then I changed the boot from BIOS back to the old hard drive. Then I booted up but apparently it started the automatic repair process which has now been going on for several hours and is (hopefully) about to finish. The old one worked fine before I tried to boot from the SSD through USB. I hope I didn't break anything.

What should I do? I found perhaps a similar case here: View: https://www.reddit.com/r/acronis/comments/r9twaz/acronis_true_image_stuck_after_choosing_source/
. In that case the solution was another cloning software (Macrium Reflect).
 
Solution
OS ( C: ) and OS partitions have different amount of free space.
Doesn't seem to be cloned properly.

Clone should be identical to source. You have over 100GB of missing data in cloned partition.

Also you have unnecessarily assigned 460GB to HP recovery partition. Total waste of space.

Clean SSD and redo cloning. Use Macrium Reflect instead.
Should be much faster, when not using USB.

Note - this is important.
After cloning is done - for first boot from cloned drive old drive has to be physically disconnected.

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
14 hours is WAY too long.

Coming from a 500GB HDD, this should have taken under an hour.

So, this indicates a potential issue with the source drive.

Put the system back together in original condition. No SSD.
Does it boot up?

If so, please show us a screencap of your DIsk Management window.
(other questions to follow)
 
Jan 3, 2023
24
1
15
14 hours is WAY too long.

Coming from a 500GB HDD, this should have taken under an hour.

So, this indicates a potential issue with the source drive.

Put the system back together in original condition. No SSD.
Does it boot up?

If so, please show us a screencap of your DIsk Management window.
(other questions to follow)

Can I just interrupt the current repair process and try to boot up again? I don't have a clue why it started in the first place. It has been going on for five hours now. It was at 99 % but now it's again at 65 % and ETA is 2:39 :( It was the old drive I tried to boot up but the new one was in a USB slot.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Can I just interrupt the current repair process and try to boot up again? I don't have a clue why it started in the first place. It has been going on for five hours now. It was at 99 % but now it's again at 65 % and ETA is 2:39 :( It was the old drive I tried to boot up but the new one was in a USB slot.
I'm just trying to eliminate ALL possible issues.

Return it back to original condition and lets move on from there.
 
Can I just interrupt the current repair process and try to boot up again? I don't have a clue why it started in the first place. It has been going on for five hours now. It was at 99 % but now it's again at 65 % and ETA is 2:39 :( It was the old drive I tried to boot up but the new one was in a USB slot.
Stopping repair process could cause file system corruption.
It's better to wait, until it finishes.

Note - you can not boot into windows from USB attached drive.
 
Jan 3, 2023
24
1
15
Thanks for the answers! I'll wait for the repair process to finish. Then I will return the system to the original condition, take a screencap from the disk management window and run a health check with Hdtune health (I assume it's safe to download and use) and also post a screenshot of that.

Another thing that might have slowed down the cloning process is that I have a motherboard with only SATA II and USB 2.0 support.
 
Jan 3, 2023
24
1
15
Yes - that speed sounds about right for USB 2.0 connection.
Why did you use USB at all?
Couldn't you just connect both drives with sata cables instead?

Well I'm not an expert. I just followed some instructions :) I didn't know there might be multiple ports on the motherboard where to connect a hard drive.
 
Jan 3, 2023
24
1
15
Also, that motherboard only has SATA II ports.
So your MX500 will benckmark significantly slower than if in a SATA III port on a newer board.

But it will still be much faster than your current HDD.

Yea, I know. My HDD was getting full and I decided to get a 1 TB drive. I thought that it was still worth the money to buy an SDD. I will probably upgrade my motherboard too some time in the future.
 
Jan 3, 2023
24
1
15
Okay, I'm back. The repair succeeded after >=12 h. Being patient was worth it. Now the setup is in its original composition and working.

I wasn't able to register to Imgur but ImgBB worked. Here's the screenshots from Disk Management and HDtune Health:

https://ibb.co/1JN1JXJ

EDIT: Oh, and sorry about Finnish language in the Disk Management. I didn't know how to change it to English.

EDIT2:

Acronis True Image is horrible software, never use it. Get a hardware cloner, that always works

Thanks for the tip!

EDIT3: Could this have something to do with IDE/AHCI? I checked it from BIOS and it's set to IDE which means, I guess, that my Windows installation is IDE too. Is this a problem?
 
Last edited:
OS ( C: ) and OS partitions have different amount of free space.
Doesn't seem to be cloned properly.

Clone should be identical to source. You have over 100GB of missing data in cloned partition.

Also you have unnecessarily assigned 460GB to HP recovery partition. Total waste of space.

Clean SSD and redo cloning. Use Macrium Reflect instead.
Should be much faster, when not using USB.

Note - this is important.
After cloning is done - for first boot from cloned drive old drive has to be physically disconnected.
 
Last edited:
Solution
Jan 3, 2023
24
1
15
OS ( C: ) and OS partitions have different amount of free space.
Doesn't seem to be cloned properly.

Clone should be identical to source. You have over 100GB of missing data in cloned partition.

Also you have unnecessarily assigned 460GB to HP recovery partition. Total waste of space.

Clean SSD and redo cloning.
Use Macrium Reflect instead.

Thanks! Out of interest: how did you read that from the image? What numbers should I look? Also: how do I clean the SSD?

"Also you have unnecessarily assigned 460GB to HP recovery partition. Total waste of space."

How do I uhm.. undo that?

EDIT: Sorry, another stupid question. I found the numbers.
 
Thanks! Out of interest: how did you read that from the image? What numbers should I look?
Disk Management shows free space in column "Vapaa tila".
Also: how do I clean the SSD?
Delete every partition from SSD. You can do that with Disk Management.
Right-click on every partition on SSD and choose "Delete volume" (or whatever that is called in Finnish).
"Also you have unnecessarily assigned 460GB to HP recovery partition. Total waste of space."
How do I uhm.. undo that?
Redo cloning. Do not assign any additional space to recovery partition.
 
Jan 3, 2023
24
1
15
Disk Management shows free space in column "Vapaa tila".

Delete every partition from SSD. You can do that with Disk Management.
Right-click on every partition on SSD and choose "Delete volume" (or whatever that is called in Finnish).

Redo cloning. Do not assign any additional space to recovery partition.

Great! Wiping done (553 MB is some kind of recovery partition that can't be wiped). Macrium Reflect installed.

Here's what I'm looking at at the moment:

https://ibb.co/G5M9C7j

What's the "Primary NTFS"? It was the partition I couldn't wipe through Disk Management and it was already at the destination drive when opening Macrium. Should I try to remove it again and clone it from the source drive or leave it as it is?