Solved Cloned SSD will not boot computer

Winuser · Jun 23, 2024

DaSOB said:
SUCCESS! I ordered a Kingston 480 GB SSD and cloned it with MR, then put it into my computer. It works perfectly! Something about the
Crucial just wasn't compatible with my system. I'm going to put the old Kingston 256 GB SSD in the ODD bay with the cradle and use it for any mass storage needs I may have.

Thanks for all the help, folks!!

I'm glad to hear that you now have a larger drive that works. IMHO, you did the right thing by returning the 512GB Crucial drive and buying another drive. Was the drive not compatible or defective? Who knows. What does maters is you now have a larger drive that works.

Megahertz · Jun 23, 2024

Glad you did find a solution.
Please mark this thread as solced

DaSOB · Jun 23, 2024

Megahertz said:
Glad you did find a solution.
Please mark this thread as solced

Done!

spapakons · Jun 23, 2024

As already said, it was incompatibility with the Crucial brand. I have seen other laptops not working with Crucial SSDs and having no issues with other brands. Even in the unlikely case the drive was defective, he should return it for a replacement anyway. Going to another brand was a way to ensure it will work. He would have wasted his time if he tried to replace it with the same model first only to confirm it is incompatible with his computer.

DaSOB · Jun 23, 2024

spapakons said:
As already said, it was incompatibility with the Crucial brand. I have seen other laptops not working with Crucial SSDs and having no issues with other brands. Even in the unlikely case the drive was defective, he should return it for a replacement anyway. Going to another brand was a way to ensure it will work. He would have wasted his time if he tried to replace it with the same model first only to confirm it is incompatible with his computer.

I have contacted Crucial and gotten an RMA. I'll be shipping the drive back to them this coming week.

Winuser · Jun 23, 2024

hdmi said:
What makes you think that I am trying to ague against his decision to send it back? It's a free world, everyone can do with his/her computer what he/she wants.

Going by your post I get the same feeling that you didn't want Sam to send the drive back. You wanted to have him waste the time and effort to test the drive instead of sending it back. As we see now, sending the drive back and ordering a different drive was the right thing to do.

spapakons · Monday at 5:16 AM

Testing the drive would be a wasting of time. Unnecessarily upgrading the firmware (he did plan to return it anyway) would risk voiding the Warranty. Don't make me to explain it once again. Most PC services seek for the slightest excuse to refuse Warranty because they pay for shipping and they don't want to risk sending devices that the manufacturer could claim NFF (not fault found). Also because they will happily charge you to fix it outside Warranty. Upgrading the firmware is a very good excuse that the customer did it wrong. Don't make it that easy for them. When you suspect the device is faulty, you leave it as it is and return it to the shop. If the issue can be fixed by firmware upgrade, the shop will try it before returning the device to manufacturer and inform you if it eventually works. No need to waste your time to do it yourself and risk voiding the Warranty.

Megahertz · Monday at 4:30 PM

spapakons said:
As already said, it was incompatibility with the Crucial brand. I have seen other laptops not working with Crucial SSDs and having no issues with other brands. Even in the unlikely case the drive was defective, he should return it for a replacement anyway. Going to another brand was a way to ensure it will work. He would have wasted his time if he tried to replace it with the same model first only to confirm it is incompatible with his computer.

I'm not sure it was an incompatibility.
It could have been that the EFI partition wasn't cloned accordingly as the drive was recognized by BIOS and even showed under disk manager.
Windows Disk manager isn't a good disk manager.
- It doesn't show MSR partition
- It doesn't show the real state of the EFI and recovery partition. It shows as 100% free when it isn't.
If you want a good disk manager install Minitool partition

spapakons · Monday at 4:46 PM

If the drive is not even detected in BIOS, no other software can see it.

DaSOB · Monday at 5:40 PM

Megahertz said:
If you want a good disk manager install Minitool partition

I downloaded this. Thanks! I posted a screen grab of the partitions - any suggestions as to improvements I can make via this tool?

SIW2 · Monday at 6:04 PM

That 17gb looks like an oem recovery partition. Presumably it contains an image to restore to factory state.

What are you planning to do with the 224.6gb unallocated space at the end ?

DaSOB · Monday at 6:54 PM

SIW2 said:
That 17gb looks like an oem recovery partition. Presumably it contains an image to restore to factory state.

What are you planning to do with the 224.6gb unallocated space at the end ?

That's going to be for future expansion as my storage needs may increase.

Megahertz · Tuesday at 7:43 AM

spapakons said:
If the drive is not even detected in BIOS, no other software can see it.

But it was seen by Windows so it was also recognized by BIOS
from post #56, I believe the Crucial was drive 1

Megahertz · Tuesday at 7:57 AM

DaSOB said:
That's going to be for future expansion as my storage needs may increase.

You can delete the D: partition and create a new partition (17G+225G) or you can delete the D: partition, remove the recovery environment from the Windows Recovery partition (reagentc /disable), move the Windows Recovery partition to the end of the drive and incorporate the free space (17G+225G) to C: and then set the recovery environment back to the Windows Recovery partition (reagentc /enable). It can easily be done by Minitool.

DaSOB · Tuesday at 8:19 AM

Megahertz said:
You can delete the D: partition and create a new partition (17G+225G) or you can delete the D: partition, remove the recovery environment from the Windows Recovery partition (reagentc /disable), move the Windows Recovery partition to the end of the drive and incorporate the free space (17G+225G) to C: and then set the recovery environment back to the Windows Recovery partition (reagentc /enable). It can easily be done by Minitool.

Thanks. Is this a "drag 'n' drop" operation?

jimbo45 · Tuesday at 8:28 AM

DaSOB said:
Thanks. Is this a "drag 'n' drop" operation?

forget minitool etc.

Just boot Windows install cd / Macrium stand alone / winpe disk and enter diskpart.
On cloned disk create a small efi partition , size=100M, format fat32 and assign it to say letter S and your cloned disk to letter W.

exit diskpart, now simply cd :\w\windows\system32, w: to get the W directory (w:\windows\system32) and now install the windows bootloader : bcdboot w:\windows /s S: /fUEFI

Disk should boot OK now.

Cheers
jimbo

spapakons · Tuesday at 9:36 AM

Using Diskpart without knowing exactly what you are doing is very dangerous. You may accidentally delete the wrong partition and lose data or render the system unbootable. It is much safer and preferable to use a GUI application duch as Minitool Partition Manager.

Megahertz · Tuesday at 9:40 AM

DaSOB said:
Thanks. Is this a "drag 'n' drop" operation?

No, but is quite simple.
I listed two options. Witch one you would like to have?

DaSOB · Tuesday at 9:47 AM

Megahertz said:
No, but is quite simple.
I listed two options. Witch one you would like to have?

I'll try the one you set forth a couple of posts up. Thanks!

hdmi · Tuesday at 9:49 AM

Megahertz said:
I'm not sure it was an incompatibility.

It might have been that, but still I would be fairly suprised if it was. That's why I earlier said we probably never will know what was the root cause of the problem, and, various people jumping to all sorts of baseless conclusions are part why I don't very often like to reply to threads like this. Bottomless pits are bottomless. lmao