Question Tried moving SSD from old PC to new one, now it won't boot in either of them ?

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scyer327

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Feb 15, 2013
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I tried to move an SSD from an old Dell desktop to a newly purchased one, just to see if it could possibly boot off it. Unfortunately the new computer was not able to recognize the drive as a bootable device, even trying different SATA ports and removing the M2 drive it came with. After replacing the SSD back into the old Dell desktop, it tried to go through startup repair but wasn't able to fix the errors. So now the drive is somehow corrupted, and I can't even read files off of it from another computer. Any idea what could have happened here and how I might be able to fix it? I'm currently cloning it to another drive, which I now know I should have done before trying anything but I never expected it to get corrupted moving it back and forth between machines. Any help would be appreciated
 
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Thanks for the suggestion I'll definitely give that a try once the cloning is done. Although I'm not sure if the startup repair on a USB installer will do anything different than the startup repair option built into the recovery partition on the drive
 
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scyer327 said:
I tried to move an SSD from an old Dell desktop to a newly purchased one, just to see if it could possibly boot off it. Unfortunately the new computer was not able to recognize the drive as a bootable device, even trying different SATA ports and removing the M2 drive it came with. After replacing the SSD back into the old Dell desktop, it tried to go through startup repair but wasn't able to fix the errors. So now the drive is somehow corrupted, and I can't even read files off of it from another computer. Any idea what could have happened here and how I might be able to fix it? I'm currently cloning it to another drive, which I now know I should have done before trying anything but I never expected it to get corrupted moving it back and forth between machines. Any help would be appreciated
Click to expand...
Yes, that happens.

Put it in the new system, it makes some changes to try to boot.
Eventually it fails and gives up.

Put it back in the old system, and those changes are too much for that one.

How to fix?
Recover from the full drive backup you made before you went down this path.
(but I'm guessing that does not exist)
 
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fzabkar said:
Was your old drive configured with an MBR partition rather than GPT? If so, it could that your new machine's EFI BIOS is unable to boot from MBR. (You shouldn't be booting from it, anyway.)

Can you show us the Partitions tab in DMDE?

https://dmde.com/
Click to expand...
Here's what I got

rdKVsxT.png
 
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You have an MBR partition style, so that explains the "no bootable devices" message.

The OS partition has ExCF Indicators. This means that the boot sector (B) is missing or damaged, and the file system (underlined F) is also damaged to some extent.

If you d-click the "OS" NTFS volume and expand the $Root, do you see your file/folder tree?

Edit:

The "no bootable devices" message could also be due to the missing boot sector.
 
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D-click the $Metadata and take note of the date/time stamps of the metafiles, particularly the $MFT. That will be the date that the NTFS volume was formatted. If the volume was formatted, then the SSD will have been TRIM-ed, in which case your data would be unrecoverable.
 
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As far as I can see here, it looks like all the dates listed (including $MFT) are all from back in 2013. If this means there' still a chance of recovery, what would be the recommended action? Thanks

llS9D2e.png
 
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Ideally you would clone the drive to an image file on your HDD, then run a full scan of the clone. You can use the Tools -> Copy Sectors function of DMDE to perform the clone, assuming that the SSD is healthy. Cloning preserves the current state of the file system.

Start with a SMART report. This will tell you if the SSD has encountered any problems with bad blocks, etc.

https://www.reddit.com/r/datarecoverysoftware/wiki/index/smart/
 
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I did perform a clone of the hole disk to troubleshoot on, I've been having no luck using drive readers to read the data as Windows just keeps saying the drive needs to be formatted. I also tried booting from a Hirenboot USB and tried to run some recovery software, still not seeing any files. Some of the software indicates the drive is bitlocker encrypted, maybe that's part of the problem but I've never been prompted for an encryption key so far
Moonstick2 said:
If you don't have a copies of the data files (not just a clone of the whole thing) already, I'd concentrate on getting them from the disk first before messing around trying to fix the boot sector.
Click to expand...
 
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scyer327 said:
I did perform a clone of the hole disk to troubleshoot on, I've been having no luck using drive readers to read the data as Windows just keeps saying the drive needs to be formatted. I also tried booting from a Hirenboot USB and tried to run some recovery software, still not seeing any files. Some of the software indicates the drive is bitlocker encrypted, maybe that's part of the problem but I've never been prompted for an encryption key so far
Click to expand...
BitLocker does not necessarily require a key input when you boot up.

My Surface Go is BL encrypted, and does not.

What is DOES work for if someone were to remove that drive and try to access it in another system. That is where the BL kicks in.
 
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scyer327 said:
I did perform a clone of the hole disk to troubleshoot on, I've been having no luck using drive readers to read the data as Windows just keeps saying the drive needs to be formatted. I also tried booting from a Hirenboot USB and tried to run some recovery software, still not seeing any files. Some of the software indicates the drive is bitlocker encrypted, maybe that's part of the problem but I've never been prompted for an encryption key so far
Click to expand...
Windows is prompting you to format the drive because it cannot find the boot sector for the "OS" partition.

In DMDE's Partitions tab, highlight the OS partition and tick the Advanced checkbox. You should now see the boot sector in the right hand pane. Change the focus to this pane and select Mode -> Hexadecimal/Text. Does it look like the following (you may need to maximise the window)?

https://www.researchgate.net/figure...ume-indicating-the-presence-of_fig3_242388296

Hex dump of a boot sector from a Vista operating system volume indicating the presence of BitLocker:

https://www.researchgate.net/profil...-system-volume-indicating-the-presence-of.png
 
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fzabkar said:
Windows is prompting you to format the drive because it cannot find the boot sector for the "OS" partition.

In DMDE's Partitions tab, highlight the OS partition and tick the Advanced checkbox. You should now see the boot sector in the right hand pane. Change the focus to this pane and select Mode -> Hexadecimal/Text. Does it look like the following (you may need to maximise the window)?

https://www.researchgate.net/figure...ume-indicating-the-presence-of_fig3_242388296

Hex dump of a boot sector from a Vista operating system volume indicating the presence of BitLocker:

https://www.researchgate.net/profil...-system-volume-indicating-the-presence-of.png
Click to expand...
I don't seem to see the same thing in my screenshot, although Windows disk management and other drive tools have labeled the volume as Bitlocker encrypted.

Right now my priority will be trying to make this drive readable if it is at all possible.

brioLOm.png
 
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I moved a Windows 10 SSD from one computer (Dell Vostro 1700) to another almost-identical one (the new one has more memory) because the display died on the old one. The new one has an Intel WiFi card and the old one had a Broadcom card. It boots on the new computer, but my setup is gone and it's complaining about not being registered. What now?
 
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Van_Snyder said:
I moved a Windows 10 SSD from one computer (Dell Vostro 1700) to another almost-identical one (the new one has more memory) because the display died on the old one. The new one has an Intel WiFi card and the old one had a Broadcom card. It boots on the new computer, but my setup is gone and it's complaining about not being registered. What now?
Click to expand...
Please start a NEW thread for your particular situation.

NOTE: Moving a drive+OS like this rarely works 100%
 
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