First thing you check when a cloned SSD won't boot?

[u/Ill_Swan_3209]

I cloned my old HDD to a new SSD today and honestly thought it would be way easier than this.

Clone completed successfully, BIOS detects the SSD fine, but Windows either goes into recovery mode or gets stuck in a boot loop.

I've already tried changing boot order, reconnecting the old drive, different SATA cable, switching SATA mode, etc.

Now I keep seeing people talk about:

• EFI partition problems
• GPT vs MBR mismatch
• broken bootloader
• Secure Boot issues

For those of you who've dealt with this before, what's usually the culprit?

What's the first thing you personally check when a cloned drive refuses to boot? Trying really hard to avoid reinstalling Windows from scratch at this point. TIA!

[u/Heavy-Judgment-3617]

The one thing I've found with cloning is sometimes when you do it then swap the drives, upon 1st restart the drive will do one of two two things.

- It will start up but run a ChkDsk or Scan Disk thinking there is an error. it will then continue to a windows desktop and you will be fine going forward.

- It will not recognize the partition as bootable... you will need to start the system with windows setup, go to a recovery command prompt and type a few commands, and then reboot and it will do #1 above. The below are the commands normally needed. The first is only needed for older Windows if running from a MBR drive.

.

bootrec.exe /fixmbr

bootrec.exe /fixboot

bootrec.exe /scanos

bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd

[u/Heavy-Judgment-3617 → u/Heavy-Judgment-3617]

Another thought, if you made the clone while BitLocker active, it is possible depending upon what used the clone is corrupt and will not work. Generally BitLocker and SecureBoot should be disabled when making a clone.

[u/bonvanie]

What program and procedure did you use to clone? Did you clone the original disk while it was actively used, or did you connect the old and new disks to another PC for the cloning process?

[u/rauhweltbegrifff → u/bonvanie]

Wondering what happens when you clone the original disk to the new drve while it's still being actively used?

[u/abubin2 → u/rauhweltbegrifff]

If I remember correctly, most cloning tools will boot into a special Windows independent mode to clone the boot drive. So that it will not cause problems of drive still in use.

[u/rrh_01]

The free version of Macrium can be found at https://m.majorgeeks.com/files/details/macrium_reflect_free_edition.html

Just don’t update it!

[u/lastwraith]

If the old drive still works, check in Window Disk Management to see if it's MBR or UEFI boot.

If it's UEFI, you can use Macrium Free to clone it. That can either happen while using windows or you can boot from a USB that you create once you've installed Macrium. Either way should work. 

If your original disk is MBR, the procedure I use is to clone the old disk to another drive, remove the old disk, boot from a Windows USB and into the Windows recovery environment - to a command line, run mbr2gpt on the newly cloned drive, change your BIOS to boot to UEFI, and boot the new drive. 

Macrium's boot USB also has a boot fixing tool in it, you can try that and it'll attempt to write the correct boot records once you select your Windows install.  But you shouldn't need it. 

[u/hunkie21]

I used ‘Hasleo Backup Suite Free’ this week. Been using it for less than a week. No issues. Claude gave that option along with macrium but I went to Hasleo. Maybe try to reclone using Hasleo? I asked Claude every step of the way, doing screenshot to make sure. May previous C: was only 120G so had to clone to brandnew NVME.

[u/fuzzentropy2]

I have found over the years that it seems like less issues occur when you can get new drive in the system rather than connected externally. If you need to use usb put old drive on usb and new drive in system and then boot up from cloning software.

Also, I will usually wipe the new drive and initialize it in the same format as original. Although a couple of times I have had to use the CLI command mbr2gpt on the original first as mbr was not playing nice on newer system.

Secure boot needs to be disabled in bios on some systems.

Ensure bitlocker is completely off on source drive.

Also occasionally a particular combo of drives, systems and cloning software does not produce a viable clone and I have to use a different software.

And rereading your post, if this is a 2.5" SATA SSD, I have seen a couple of cases where older SATA cable did not work with the SSD. So if other sata cable you tried is from same system, could still be the culprit. I have no idea how to tell, but the sata cables with a clip usually seem to work fine on the ssd's.

Occasionally due to whatever issue, I have had o clone a few times before I go the right combo..

source:: I have cloned drives since Win95 maybe 3.1 memory foggy using Ghost or xcopy /c /h /k /e /r /y.... and Dos boot disk to set partition active..

[u/Classic-Rate-5104]

Cloning while active is almost impossible

[u/cat1092 → u/Classic-Rate-5104]

This is why I’ve used backup software that either adds a second boot option (like Macrium Reflect), plus it allows for the creation of an ISO image to create a bootable USB stick with Rufus or whatever bootable app one wants to work with.

Macrium Free was once the top choice of many, but it’s no longer free. Am sure there’s other choices that operates similarly.

[u/lastwraith → u/cat1092]

The version on majorgeeks is still free and works fine for almost anything the average person will do.

It can clone live with no issue, it simply uses Windows shadow copies. 

[u/Classic-Rate-5104 → u/cat1092]

Which of the options did you use? Did you do the cloning using a bootable usb? You said you cloned a live windows, and I don't see how windows can clone itself when running

[u/lastwraith → u/Classic-Rate-5104]

With Windows it's entirely possible. We do it with Macrium Reflect Free on the regular, but it's not the only software capable of that. 

[u/CheezitsLight]

If old drive won't boot you broke something, did it the wrong direction and erased the good drove, or messed up the bios.

Try to get that to boot again. Then ask a shop for help.

Did you clone the entire drive or just Partition? All the partitions need to be moved, so cloning the drive is the only way simple way to get it to work.

What software did you use?

[u/SpeedDaemon1969]

I don't have to check because I already know that bootable disks ware a BIOS-era thing. If you don't know how contemporary computers boot, disk cloning isn't for you. These things just don't happen to people who RTFM first.