[SOLVED] Windows 10 won't boot after cloning from sata HDD to m.2 SSD

[Bunnii-Latte]

Got a Samsung 970 evo plus 500gb m.2 SSD to use as a boot drive for my OS and games, and keep my current 1t Toshiba sata HDD drive as storage for documents, music and such. I formatted the SSD using the windows disk manager, then I cleaned up my hdd so it's under 500 gb, in preparation for cloning using Macrium reflect 7. I selected all the partitions, let it clone for a while and all went well. I could see my new samsung ssd present in the "my pc" folder alongside my hdd and another disk by the name of "system reserved". I shut down my pc, opened bios and set my SSD as the primary boot device and moved the HDD as a secondary one. Saved everything, booted Windows annnnndddd... blue screen. At the very bottom it says the stop code is "inaccessible boot device". After that it sends me to the Automatic repair screen. Tried restarting the system multiple times to no avail. Same screen, same everything. Any idea what might've happened? If I didn't state every detail please feel free to ask for more...

 

[hang-the-9]

aren't I supposed to format the drive in disk management BEFORE cloning it?? Doesn't formatting create a disk in the this pc folder which is where the cloned os is going to go? Sorry, I'm a little confused

You don't need to do anything to the disk when you clone it, the cloning process dumps the contents of the disk to the new disk, including any partitions and formatting on the drive. Whatever was on the disk before does not matter. It could be blank, it could be full, once you do a "clone" the contents will be whatever was on the source drive.

You said you got the original drive to under 500gb, exactly how much disk space is taken up on it that you are cloning? You can't clone say 480 gb onto a 500 gb drive, it won't work that way once the formatting is done. Also you started to get drive errors, all the messing around you are doing can be doing damage to the disk, depending on how you are doing things. Are you cloning from a boot disk or from inside Windows wile the disk you are cloning is live?

I suggest you make a boot disk using the cloning software, remove your old drive from the system, connect it with a USB enclosure. Boot off the USB stick with the cloning software then clone the drive to the new one.

If it keeps failing, just start with a clean Windows setup on that drive, with only that one drive connected. Once that is done, connect the old drive to use as the secondary.

 

[SkyNetRising]

So what I need to do before cloning is create a new simple volume if it says it's unallocated and that's it?

Leave it unallocated. The drive gets overwritten during cloning process. There's no need to create anything on it.

You may want to check, if target drive is partitioned in same partition scheme as source drive though. If partitioning scheme is different, cloning result may not be bootable.

 

[USAFRet]

well, it just errored on me and stopped the cloning process.

What specific error did it display?

 

[Bunnii-Latte]

You don't need to do anything to the disk when you clone it, the cloning process dumps the contents of the disk to the new disk, including any partitions and formatting on the drive. Whatever was on the disk before does not matter. It could be blank, it could be full, once you do a "clone" the contents will be whatever was on the source drive.

You said you got the original drive to under 500gb, exactly how much disk space is taken up on it that you are cloning? You can't clone say 480 gb onto a 500 gb drive, it won't work that way once the formatting is done. Also you started to get drive errors, all the messing around you are doing can be doing damage to the disk, depending on how you are doing things. Are you cloning from a boot disk or from inside Windows wile the disk you are cloning is live?

I suggest you make a boot disk using the cloning software, remove your old drive from the system, connect it with a USB enclosure. Boot off the USB stick with the cloning software then clone the drive to the new one.

If it keeps failing, just start with a clean Windows setup on that drive, with only that one drive connected. Once that is done, connect the old drive to use as the secondary.

Ahh, I understand. I was sure I had to create a new simple volume before cloning... I do need to initialize the drive after getting the popup when opening drive management, correct?
The original 1t drive I'm cloning from I got to 373 GB, I have it connected via a sata cable and I'm planning to clone all the data from it onto an M.2 Nvme samsung ssd I have inserted into my motherboard. The Samsung SSD is completely empty, 465 GB free it says. No cloned data on it. I'm doing the cloning inside Windows whilst both drives are active.
My plan is to, after I manage to clone everything successfully and boot from the SSD, wipe all the data from my HDD and transfer the documents folders, music, videos and stuff, while using my new ssd for windows and a few games. I hope that helps

 

[Bunnii-Latte]

Leave it unallocated. The drive gets overwritten during cloning process. There's no need to create anything on it.

You may want to check, if target drive is partitioned in same partition scheme as source drive though. If partitioning scheme is different, cloning result may not be bootable.

How does one do that?

 

[SkyNetRising]

How does one do that?

You ask google, if you don't know it. 😉

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/84888-check-if-disk-mbr-gpt-windows.html

 

[Bunnii-Latte]

You ask google, if you don't know it. 😉

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/84888-check-if-disk-mbr-gpt-windows.html

Ooohhh mbr and gpt, my apologies. Both the sata HDD and my new m.2 SSD are mbr.

 

[Bunnii-Latte]

What specific error did it display?

"The Data Migration function has been interrupted for an unknown reason." Checking the disk now, it's offline. I have no idea what's happening...