[SOLVED] OS installed on C drive can only boot from D drive?

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Minecarrot

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Oct 29, 2015
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Hi everyone,
I've recently bought a new M.2 drive to put my OS onto as my old SSD drive is completely full up and causing problems.
To copy over my OS, I need to have only my current C drive and the destination drive connected.

I disconnected my other 2 HDDs and tried to boot back up only to have a message come up saying "Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key".

I then reconnected one of my HDDs which I had seen have some windows files in, and it booted up perfectly fine.

I also tried to disconnect the C drive SSD and only boot from the HDD, but I got a Windows blue screen error message saying some files were missing(I can get that exact error message as well if necessary).

This leads me to believe that somehow all of the boot files are on the HDD and the rest of the Windows files are distributed in some way across the two drives.
Please let me know how I can sort this out, any help is appreciated.
 
Last edited:
Solution
USAFRet
With the system running, please show us a screencap of the Disk Management window.
Identify which drives are which.


The boot partition living on a different drive is quite common. It happens when you install the OS with more than one physical drive connected at the time.
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With the system running, please show us a screencap of the Disk Management window.
Identify which drives are which.


The boot partition living on a different drive is quite common. It happens when you install the OS with more than one physical drive connected at the time.
 
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Solution
Minecarrot said:
I've recently bought a new M.2 drive to put my OS onto as my old SSD drive is completely full up and causing problems.
Please let me know how I can sort this out, any help is appreciated.
Click to expand...
So .. Disk 0 is the new M.2 drive and you want to clone windows to it. Right?
Do it this way:
  1. delete F: partition. Disk 0 should be all unallocated;
  2. copy 100MB System reserved partition from Disk 3 to Disk 0;
  3. copy C: partition from Disk 1 to Disk 0;
  4. shutdown system, disconnect all drives except new M.2 drive;
  5. check BIOS, make sure M.2 drive is first in boot order, boot into windows;
  6. shutdown again, reconnect all drives and boot into windows.

Done.
 
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SkyNetRising said:
So .. Disk 0 is the new M.2 drive and you want to clone windows to it. Right?
Do it this way:
  1. delete F: partition. Disk 0 should be all unallocated;
  2. copy 100MB System reserved partition from Disk 3 to Disk 0;
  3. copy C: partition from Disk 1 to Disk 0;
  4. shutdown system, disconnect all drives except new M.2 drive;
  5. check BIOS, make sure M.2 drive is first in boot order, boot into windows;
  6. shutdown again, reconnect all drives and boot into windows.
Done.
Click to expand...
How do I go about copying the System Reserved partition onto Disk 0?
 
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-----------------------------
Specific steps for a successful clone operation:
-----------------------------
Verify the actual used space on the current drive is significantly below the size of the new SSD
Download and install Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration, if a Samsung SSD)
If you are cloning from a SATA drive to PCIe/NVMe, install the relevant driver for this new NVMe/PCIe drive.
Power off
Disconnect ALL drives except the current C and the new SSD - Change this regarding YOUR particular situation. See above.
Power up
Run the Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration)
Select ALL the partitions on the existing C drive

If you are going from a smaller drive to a larger, by default, the target partition size will be the same as the Source. You probably don't want that
You can manipulate the size of the partitions on the target (larger)drive
Click on "Cloned Partition Properties", and you can specifiy the resulting partition size, to even include the whole thing

Click the 'Clone' button
Wait until it is done
When it finishes, power off
Disconnect ALL drives except for the new SSD
This is to allow the system to try to boot from ONLY the SSD
Swap the SATA cables around so that the new drive is connected to the same SATA port as the old drive
Power up, and verify the BIOS boot order
If good, continue the power up

It should boot from the new drive, just like the old drive.
Maybe reboot a time or two, just to make sure.

If it works, and it should, all is good.

Later, reconnect the old drive and wipe all partitions on it.
This will probably require the commandline diskpart function, and the clean command.

Ask questions if anything is unclear.
-----------------------------
 
Upvote 1 Downvote
USAFRet said:
-----------------------------
Specific steps for a successful clone operation:
-----------------------------
Verify the actual used space on the current drive is significantly below the size of the new SSD
Download and install Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration, if a Samsung SSD)
If you are cloning from a SATA drive to PCIe/NVMe, install the relevant driver for this new NVMe/PCIe drive.
Power off
Disconnect ALL drives except the current C and the new SSD - Change this regarding YOUR particular situation. See above.
Power up
Run the Macrium Reflect (or Samsung Data Migration)
Select ALL the partitions on the existing C drive

If you are going from a smaller drive to a larger, by default, the target partition size will be the same as the Source. You probably don't want that
You can manipulate the size of the partitions on the target (larger)drive
Click on "Cloned Partition Properties", and you can specifiy the resulting partition size, to even include the whole thing

Click the 'Clone' button
Wait until it is done
When it finishes, power off
Disconnect ALL drives except for the new SSD
This is to allow the system to try to boot from ONLY the SSD
Swap the SATA cables around so that the new drive is connected to the same SATA port as the old drive
Power up, and verify the BIOS boot order
If good, continue the power up

It should boot from the new drive, just like the old drive.
Maybe reboot a time or two, just to make sure.

If it works, and it should, all is good.

Later, reconnect the old drive and wipe all partitions on it.
This will probably require the commandline diskpart function, and the clean command.

Ask questions if anything is unclear.
-----------------------------
Click to expand...

I get this error when I try to copy the C drive over:
https://gyazo.com/09ac7e9409e61c28eb647eabf41d44c8
Am I cloning the recovery partition that is in the C drive as well? Or only the primary partition?
https://gyazo.com/b1e24368ee5f479c8736743f5bf305b0
 
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geofelt said:
My understanding is that the samsung app is a C drive mover, not a clone, it should handle the situation.
But, since I have not tried this myself, I could be wrong.
Click to expand...
Right.
Mover/clone/migrate....not much of a real difference.
SDM, AFAIK, speaks to only one source drive.
I don't believe it would clone/move/migrate only the Sys Reserved partition, and then later the C partition.
 
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Upvote 1 Downvote
USAFRet said:
Failed to create snapshot.

I fear this is one of those situations when cloning is not a good idea.

When conditions are perfect, it can be great.
With a weird config like this, it may be time to just quit, and do a clean install on the new drive.
Click to expand...

That's a shame.
Sorry for being so clueless, but what does a clean install entail and how would I go about it?
 
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Minecarrot said:
That's a shame.
Sorry for being so clueless, but what does a clean install entail and how would I go about it?
Click to expand...
Starting from scratch. Just like the first day you turned the PC on.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...
forums.tomshardware.com forums.tomshardware.com
 
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USAFRet said:
Starting from scratch. Just like the first day you turned the PC on.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...
forums.tomshardware.com forums.tomshardware.com
Click to expand...

So I just install Windows 10 onto the new drive? Do I have to delete the old OS files or how does that figure?
 
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