Question Nightmare System drive expansion

[yoji]

Anyone able to help me by explaining why I having such a problem? story is
Win 11 24H2 fully patched.. but on a small 250GB SSD (M.2. NVME) so bought a 1TB one and wanted to swap.
Backed up with Acronis True Image... swapped in the new drive and restored.. and machine booted up perfectly.
So thought I was through the most risky part.. easy from here (no such luck)
Because my recovery partition is at end of drive, Acronis just recovered, exactly as it was.. and did not auto expand my C drive.
No problem, I downloaded a free partition manager (Partition wizard) and told it to move my recovery partition to end of new drive and expand the C drive to consume the now free space... it said it had done it successfully so I rebooted and my machine would not boot... came up with a stop code of "Inaccessible boot device". I checked boot priority (and it was windows boot manager.. with the new drive) but still would not boot.
So I gave up.. just restored again with Acronis and it booted up just fine again... and I repeated the move recovery to end and expand C drive with AOMEI Partition assistant.. it again said it had done it ok, but when I rebooted, again, no boot with a "Inaccessible boot device" message.. few checks but it all looked good but would just not boot.
So I gave up with these "Useless tools" and decided to do it manually.
So restored again... it booted up happily.. and I used diskpart to delete the recovery partition, used the windows "disk management" tool to extend the C drive to most of the empty space... and then recreated the recovery partition with diskpart (setting it up per the microsoft guidance).. all looked good according to disk management so rebooted.. and again got the "inaccessible boot device" stop code..
So I have given up now.. just resetting the PC (It was fairly recently set up, so didnt have much installed/configured yet)

But would really like to know why I having so much grief.
Any ideas?

 

[Darkbreeze]

You have partition problems, and LIKELY, when you began this, you didn't include the hidden boot partition. Especially if you specified the partitions in Acronis and did not include ALL of the partitions on the OS drive. It could also be related, maybe, to the security keys. That's less likely but I've seen this a few times. Mostly after a BIOS update though, but also trying to recover an installation that doesn't include the correct credentials which again might have been on a partition that was not included in your backup routine. At MINIMUM, there should have been the EFI system partition, the main C: partition that Windows is installed on AND the Recovery partition.

Without the EFI boot partition, nothing will ever work, and if that wasn't included in the backup routine or image, you are out of luck. My advice would be, if there is anything important on that drive that you can't live without, use another system to move those files to an external source, then do a clean install and afterwards move those important file back if necessary. Repeated incidents of "inaccessible boot device" are almost always because the Windows boot manager was not backed up OR was in fact on a totally different drive than the C: partition and simply didn't get included at all.

Do not "reset", "refresh" or "restore". Do a CLEAN install. Do it once, and then in the future when you create Acronis backups, make sure to include ALL partitions on the OS drive. Also, when you do a clean install, make sure there are NO other drives attached to the system except the drive you are installing FROM, which will be either a USB or optical drive, and the drive you are installing TO, so that the installer doesn't see an old Windows boot manager on a different drive and decide it doesn't need to create a new one.

 

[yoji]

You have partition problems, and LIKELY, when you began this, you didn't include the hidden boot partition. Especially if you specified the partitions in Acronis and did not include ALL of the partitions on the OS drive. It could also be related, maybe, to the security keys. That's less likely but I've seen this a few times. Mostly after a BIOS update though, but also trying to recover an installation that doesn't include the correct credentials which again might have been on a partition that was not included in your backup routine. At MINIMUM, there should have been the EFI system partition, the main C: partition that Windows is installed on AND the Recovery partition.

Without the EFI boot partition, nothing will ever work, and if that wasn't included in the backup routine or image, you are out of luck. My advice would be, if there is anything important on that drive that you can't live without, use another system to move those files to an external source, then do a clean install and afterwards move those important file back if necessary. Repeated incidents of "inaccessible boot device" are almost always because the Windows boot manager was not backed up OR was in fact on a totally different drive than the C: partition and simply didn't get included at all.

Do not "reset", "refresh" or "restore". Do a CLEAN install. Do it once, and then in the future when you create Acronis backups, make sure to include ALL partitions on the OS drive. Also, when you do a clean install, make sure there are NO other drives attached to the system except the drive you are installing FROM, which will be either a USB or optical drive, and the drive you are installing TO, so that the installer doesn't see an old Windows boot manager on a different drive and decide it doesn't need to create a new one.

Thanks for your reply, but I think you missed a key part I detailed. i.e. that after the recovery of the drive, it booted up just fine, so I think we can safely say that all key partitions were recovered just fine.
Its only after the move of the recovery partition and extension of the C drive that the problem occurred.
As I said, I did check in UEFI BIOS when I had the problem and it did confirm that windows boot manager was indeed set to correctly look at the correct new drive that had just been recovered to.

 

[droyls]

Yoji, I have followed the same process multiple times when upgrading my main laptop from 125GB to 256GB to 1TB then 2TB using Acronis to make a full disk backup then restoring the same to the new NVMe M.2 SSD installed in place of the smaller drive when booted from Acronis rescue media (initially ATI 2018 / 2019 then 2020 and 2021) - the later versions created using Bruno's MVP Assistant.

Each time has worked successfully, including moving the Recovery partition using MiniTool Partition Wizard and resizing partitions to make full use of the extra drive space.

The laptop was originally running Windows 10 using UEFI / GPT and later upgraded to Windows 11, currently on 24H2.

See Acronis forum topic: Steve migrate NVMe SSD where I have documented (with images) the process that I have used.

Unfortunately, telling you of my successful migrations doesn't help you with this issue! One tip that I have used when I have encountered boot issues that has helped, is to use Macrium Reflect boot media, which has an option to Fix Windows Boot Problems in the Restore menu of the media.

For users who don't have Macrium Reflect, then booting from Hiren's BootCD PE offers the option to launch an older version of Macrium Reflect 7 which has the same option.

Besides the above, then I would suggest taking a simplified approach, i.e. do the initial restore to achieve a successful boot into Win 11 on the new larger SSD.
Next, move the Recovery partition then restart to confirm if Win 11 still boots successfully.
Continue with further steps, i.e. try creating a new partition in the free space rather than expanding the OS C: partition - test booting again....
See if you can identify what operation / where in the process the issue is arising from?

Steve

 

[yoji]

Besides the above, then I would suggest taking a simplified approach, i.e. do the initial restore to achieve a successful boot into Win 11 on the new larger SSD.
Next, move the Recovery partition then restart to confirm if Win 11 still boots successfully.
Continue with further steps, i.e. try creating a new partition in the free space rather than expanding the OS C: partition - test booting again....
See if you can identify what operation / where in the process the issue is arising from?

Steve

Thanks Steve..
Yes, I used the Minitool partition wizard on your recommendation, so was surprised it didnt work (sorry if your ears were burning last night.. lol, I was not happy) but the fact that it didnt work.. and nor did the other tool made me think its not the tools.. something else is at play.. but I dont know what.

I did do as you suggested (partially) but didnt include it, my post was long enough already, but I did the "simplify" approach.. so recovered and then just moved the recovery and used MS disk management to expand.. but that also failed.. I dont think I tried the move recovery and reboot.

But I was getting sick of it.. and so thought a rebuild will just be quicker when I am just guessing and trying random things (and it not working so having redo it all again)...

As your experience suggests... it should have worked.. so interested in anyones insight into why it might have not..
The only extra bit of info I did not include.. is that the 24H2 build is a bit scuff... in that the PC is not genuinely win 11 compatible (CPU not supported).. so it does have a reg hack to bypass the check.. but surely that cant be the reason?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Backed up with Acronis True Image... swapped in the new drive and restored.. and machine booted up perfectly.

Please show screenshot from Disk Management -
after you have successfully cloned to new drive and booted from new drive.
(upload to imgur.com and post link)

Note - first boot from cloned drive has to be done with old drive physically disconnected.
This step is not optional. If you fail to follow this, cloned drive gets messed up and you have to redo cloning.

 

[droyls]

The only extra bit of info I did not include.. is that the 24H2 build is a bit scuff... in that the PC is not genuinely win 11 compatible (CPU not supported).. so it does have a reg hack to bypass the check.. but surely that cant be the reason?

Yoji, I tried using the Win 11 bypass trick a long while back just to see what was involved and probably on a virtual machine, but haven't bothered with the bypass since. Seems like too much hassle when MS can change the playing field at any time.

I wouldn't have thought that using the bypass should cause the issue you have reported, especially as everything was fine until after the move of the recovery partition and resizing of partition.

I have been migrating my older (and some newer) PC's to using Linux rather than try to bypass the Win 11 requirements and more inclined to do more of the same given MS's latest twist of trying to force all users to have a MS Account on new installs.

 

[yoji]

Please show screenshot from Disk Management -
after you have successfully cloned to new drive and booted from new drive.
(upload to imgur.com and post link)

Note - first boot from cloned drive has to be done with old drive physically disconnected.
This step is not optional. If you fail to follow this, cloned drive gets messed up and you have to redo cloning.

Sorry.. too late, I have rebuilt the machine now.. but it looked identical to the original, except it had about 750Gb free space after the recovery partition.

It was not a "clone" process... it was a restore system image from a backup. So it was
1. Backup whole system drive, all partitions with Acronis.
2. Create Acronis recovery USB media on machine
3. Take out the old SDD
4. Put in the new SSD
5 Boot to Acronis recovery media and restore the backup.

And just to reiterate again.. we know that the recovery process worked just fine... the machine booted just fine immediately after the recovery process.

 

[Priscus]

So, in essence, you are saying that you lose at least an element of your boot process when you enlarge the partition. Have I understood this correctly?

 

[yoji]

So, in essence, you are saying that you lose at least an element of your boot process when you enlarge the partition. Have I understood this correctly?

If by saying "you lose an element of your boot process" you mean "you lose your whole ability to boot".
And
"When you enlarge your partition" you mean "when you move the recovery partition to the end of the drive and extend the C drive space to use up the free space"
Then yes..
But I described it as I did to give detail and context, but if you can give helpful insight with your simplification.. then great, i'm all ears

 

[SkyNetRising]

And just to reiterate again.. we know that the recovery process worked just fine... the machine booted just fine immediately after the recovery process.

Yes. Show screenshot from Disk Management after
recovery process is done and you have booted into windows from recovered new drive.

 

[yoji]

Yes. Show screenshot from Disk Management after
recovery process is done and you have booted into windows from recovered new drive.

I already replied to you on that... look up for my reply.

If I recall (since I was messing with it in diskpart at one stage) there were 4 partitions, first was the EFI partition, then the hidden MS partition, then the system C partition, then the recovery partition, then a lot of space....

 

[SkyNetRising]

I already replied to you on that... look up for my reply.

I see no screenshots.

Descriptions in text are not really enough here.
You may be recalling imprecisely from memory or explaining one thing, that actually is something completely different.
A screenshot would clear up all the possible ambiguities.

 

[yoji]

I see no screenshots.

Descriptions in text are not really enough here.
You may be recalling imprecisely from memory or explaining one thing, that actually is something completely different.
A screenshot would clear up all the possible ambiguities.

Which bit of "Sorry.. too late, I have rebuilt the machine now.".. do you not understand?
So that ship has sailed... I am interested to understand only, in case I see same/similar in future.
What kind of scenario are you thinking of.. where a perfectly working drive, can be broken by doing what I did (with 2 separate commercial tools.. or manually as I described)?
In theory, I still have the backup, so I COULD recover again and take a screen shot etc... but I would destroy the rebuild (unless I backup new build... then restore old backup for screen shot... then restore the new backup) which is a PITA.
So would really need a good theory on how it would help get to the bottom of it.

 

[SkyNetRising]

What kind of scenario are you thinking of.. where a perfectly working drive, can be broken by doing what I did (with 2 separate commercial tools.. or manually as I described)?

If you had documented your actions with screenshots, then somebody may have caught, what was done wrong there.
Anyway - guess it's not relevant anymore. Good luck on figuring this out.

 

[yoji]

If you had documented your actions with screenshots, then somebody may have caught, what was done wrong there.
Anyway - guess it's not relevant anymore. Good luck on figuring this out.

I edited my reply as you replied so you may not have seen... Not sure it will change your mind

"In theory, I still have the backup, so I COULD recover again and take a screen shot etc... but I would destroy the rebuild (unless I backup new build... then restore old backup for screen shot... then restore the new backup) which is a PITA.
So would really need a good theory on how it would help get to the bottom of it"

It failed four times, so pretty sure if I did it again I could reproduce the problem.
But as I elude to.,.. I would need someone to put forward a sensible working hypothesis on how it could have gone wrong, to go to that effort, when at best we seem to have a "clutching at straws" screen shot need.

 

[USAFRet]

But as I elude to.,.. I would need someone to put forward a sensible working hypothesis on how it could have gone wrong, to go to that effort, when at best we seem to have a "clutching at straws" screen shot need.

There are methods that would have probably done this with NO issues.

As it is, carry on with your working system.

 

[TerryLaze]

I would need someone to put forward a sensible working hypothesis on how it could have gone wrong, to go to that effort, when at best we seem to have a "clutching at straws" screen shot need.

Partitions can be given a different id (guids/identifiers) , if your system was setup to boot from a specific id and the partition tool changed that id (back to default) then you wouldn't be able to boot anymore.
This would be fixable by changing the id back or changing the boot option to update the id.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/devtest/boot-options-identifiers

Manual change of GUID - how bad is it?

How bad is changing generated GUID manually and using it? Is the probability of collision still insignificant or is manipulation with GUIDs dangerous? Sometimes we just change some letter of previ...

stackoverflow.com

 

[yoji]

Partitions can be given a different id (guids/identifiers) , if your system was setup to boot from a specific id and the partition tool changed that id (back to default) then you wouldn't be able to boot anymore.
This would be fixable by changing the id back or changing the boot option to update the id.

Thanks.. I understand that, and I would def think it worth checking if it failed to boot after the restore..
But it did boot up just fine after the restore....
I am struggling to believe that 2 x commercial tools would fail to know this, and would change ID's when moving/expanding partitions... which is what would have to have happened to explain my scenario.
And also, dont forget, I also did the move (with a delete and recreate for the recovery partition, per MS instructions) and the resize within MS disk management tool... and that also caused it no longer boot... and both MS tools/methods would also surely respect these rules?

 

[TerryLaze]

Thanks.. I understand that, and I would def think it worth checking if it failed to boot after the restore..
But it did boot up just fine after the restore....
I am struggling to believe that 2 x commercial tools would fail to know this, and would change ID's when moving/expanding partitions... which is what would have to have happened to explain my scenario.
And also, dont forget, I also did the move (with a delete and recreate for the recovery partition, per MS instructions) and the resize within MS disk management tool... and that also caused it no longer boot... and both MS tools/methods would also surely respect these rules?

Is it even a prebuild?!
If it is then the company that did that is the one that didn't "follow the rules" although anybody is free to change ids.
Partition tools as well as diskpart have no notion about having to keep the id intakt, if you delete the partition, which you have to do to expand it, the old id is gone anyway.
And since the default id is based on partition info it would change when partition info changes.

Cloning the disk keeps everything the same, including ids, so booting after the restore is guaranteed to work anyway.

It's just a theory anyway.

 

[yoji]

Is it even a prebuild?!
If it is then the company that did that is the one that didn't "follow the rules" although anybody is free to change ids.
Partition tools as well as diskpart have no notion about having to keep the id intakt, if you delete the partition, which you have to do to expand it, the old id is gone anyway.
And since the default id is based on partition info it would change when partition info changes.

Cloning the disk keeps everything the same, including ids, so booting after the restore is guaranteed to work anyway.

It's just a theory anyway.

What? what has prebuild to do with it?
And when you say "Partition tools as well as diskpart have no notion about having to keep the id intakt," that makes no sense... in the context of "if you change id, you can mess up your PC so it does not boot", when these tools whole business is to work on partitions and not break peoples PC's.
Yes.. for sure if I delete a partition then that id is gone... but thats why I said I followed Microsoft guide when I did that (this guide... which explains how to manage correct id https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...e-update-400faa27-9343-461c-ada9-24c8229763bf)
As I said, was not a clone... was a restore from backup.

SO thanks for your input.. yes, an interesting theory, worth thinking about... but does not seem to fully fit with the info I provided.

 

[TerryLaze]

What? what has prebuild to do with it?

Because a normal install would not have non-default partition ids to begin with so your issue would not come from that at all, it could only happen if you did it by yourself or if an OEM used the same script to prepare x amount of disks for a production run.

As I said, was not a clone... was a restore from backup.

Acronis true image, take a guess on what image means.
Image is what you get from a clone if you do it disk to file instead of disk to disk.

 

[yoji]

Because a normal install would not have non-default partition ids to begin with so your issue would not come from that at all, it could only happen if you did it by yourself or if an OEM used the same script to prepare x amount of disks for a production run.

Acronis true image, take a guess on what image means.
Image is what you get from a clone if you do it disk to file instead of disk to disk.

Seriously... did you even read what I have said ?
It worked/booted after the restore... so all this talk of original partition ids/standard partition ids/OWM partitions id etc, is all redundant.... AFTER it was recovered, it worked, so PC was completely happy with all partition ID's

If you saying the partition tools then changed partition ids... then say so, but as I said, I cant believe commercial partition tools would change IDs when it can break PCs... they know the risks.
And this would not explain the manual process I did breaking it .. again using MS tools and processes so the extend part would not have changed id.. and the delete/recreate from the MS documentation sets the partition id correctly (and would a broken recovery part even cause a failed boot? considering to can run a PC without a recovery part).

You pushing your luck with terms when you say "Image is what you get from a clone"... Clearly Acronis takes a copy of all info and partition info and you can call it an image... but dont try and shoehorn "clone" in there... it does not fit