Windows won't boot from cloned SSD

Kitai

United States880 Posts

September 19 2020 03:16 GMT

I just installed a 1TB SSD to replace my current 240GB one (eventual plan is to wipe the 240 and give it to a friend). The software I used to clone the 240GB SSD to the 1TB SSD is Macrium Reflect and I followed the step-by-step instructions from this video. Everything seemed to go perfectly and the clone appeared to be successful. All the partitions on the new SSD appeared exactly as they were on the old SSD. A quick tour of the new drive on File Explorer showed all the same folders, files, etc. on the new drive so it looked like the clone was good to go.
Edit: Upon further inspection of the uploaded picture, it appears the amount of data on 2 of the partitions is very slightly different - does that seem important?

My next step was to reboot the computer and select the new SSD as the boot drive from the BIOS. I did so, and the new drive appeared to be booting up Windows normally - it showed the blue windows logo flash screen with the spinning wheel just like it did when booting from the old SSD. However, after a few seconds, the monitor just went completely black and there was no further activity. The computer remained powered on, the fans were blowing, the monitor was on, etc. It was just black with no login screen or any signs of life whatsoever. The only way to get booted back up again was to manually restart the computer and select the old drive as the boot drive again.

I did my best to research the problem via google searches, but no matter what wording I tried, I just kept getting useless suggestions like "make sure the drive is plugged in," or "make sure to select the new drive as a boot drive," etc.

If it helps at all, here's the model numbers for both drives:
Old SSD (240 GB) - Crucial BX200: ct240bx200ssd1
New SSD (1TB) - WD Blue 3D NAND SATA SSD: WDS100T2B0A

And here's a (low quality) picture that shows the old SSD partitions and the new SSD ones:

I've never cloned a drive before and I know there's a lot of tech savvy people here on TL so I was hoping for some advice. Thanks so much in advance!

Kitai

United States880 Posts

September 19 2020 22:30 GMT

Update - I got it working by doing the following 2 things differently (if anyone else stumbles across this later): I re-cloned the drive and made sure the partitions were in the same order on the new drive as the old drive (I had to manually calculate how large to make the data partition since you can't resize it after another partition is added after it). I also shut the computer down and immediately unplugged the old SSD before turning it back on and booting from the new SSD. I'm not sure which change fixed the issue but thought I would leave this here in case anyone else had the same issue.

Karis Vas Ryaar

United States4396 Posts

September 20 2020 06:34 GMT

glad to hear. I was going to say to try replacing the old drive with it or unplugging it because sometimes technology can get very confused with this stuff (when I was doing film editing I'd have to make sure to always plug things in the same order or it couldn't find the stuff off the disk). I wasn't sure though so I didn't post it.

Kitai

United States880 Posts

September 20 2020 22:10 GMT

On September 20 2020 15:34 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:
glad to hear. I was going to say to try replacing the old drive with it or unplugging it because sometimes technology can get very confused with this stuff (when I was doing film editing I'd have to make sure to always plug things in the same order or it couldn't find the stuff off the disk). I wasn't sure though so I didn't post it.

Yeah that might have been what did it. Thanks for the thought

Jaym121

1 Post

July 22 2022 10:30 GMT

I have been facing the same issue. Last week I bought link removed After cloning it was not booting from the SSD. And my system boot time was the same as well. Then I Called my SSD supplier that I am facing this issue. He told me to change bios settings. I changed the bios settings and my system boot time is not 10 to 15 seconds and my system speed is also good.

You can also check if you cloned the SSD correctly if the bios solution doesn't work.

User was banned for this post.

MeSaber

Sweden1235 Posts

July 24 2022 10:04 GMT

What software did you use to clone?

If you use free software it usually doesnt clone the whole drive including the boot settings. Nearly all software takes money for this but they still call their software cloning while it doesnt completely clone.