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Get a strange Windows reaction from a NVM2 drive cloned from another SSD drive

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Hello All,

I'm running Windows 10 PRO on an HP gaming desktop. 

I have two drives in my machine. A 500GB NVM2 SSD and a 1 TB SSD.  The NVM2 SSD is my main drive. 

I had an issue and tried to Clone from the 1TB to the 500GB drive. When I try an boot from the newly cloned drive it boots up normally until i put my password in and hit enter. Just past the Windows 10 password page I start seeing the cursor and a flashing taskbar. That is as far as it gets. I am using Acronis 2021. I've tried cloning it five different times with the same result. If I boot back up in the 1TB drive that works and look at the cloned disk, everything is there. I've also uninstalled and reinstalled Acronis using a slightly older version. 

Now, in the past I have cloned the 1TB drive from the NVM2 drive and it will boot with absolutely no issues. I just will not clone the NVM2 from the 1TB drive correctly. I have not tried restoring using another method yet because that is why I purchased Acronis 2021 to begin with. So I can clone a drive and keep that as a quick method of restoral. 

I hope I given enough information. I have done a search and have not seen where anyone else has had this issue. 

Thank you for your time. 

 

Ruben

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Ruben, welcome to these public User Forums.

Do you have a full disk backup of the 500GB NVMe M.2 SSD from when it was working correctly?

I have an HP Omen gaming laptop with a 500GB NVMe M.2 SSD (Samsung 970 EVO Plus) and a second 2TB Seagate HDD drive, but I have never used the HDD as a boot drive, nor cloned between the two drives in either direction.  For me, cloning from a 500GB SSD to a 2TB HDD would be a waste of good drive space that I can use to store lots more data, including backups of the SSD for recovery when on the move!

My initial thought here would be to suggest removing the 1TB SSD and see if you could then boot from the 500GB SSD?  It has never been recommended to keep a pair of cloned drives installed due to potential disk signature clash issues.

Hello Steve and thank you for your response. I don't believe I have a "good" backup from the 500GB NVMe M.2 SSD. I thought I did. I have not been able to sit and spend any time with the issue since its occurrence. I did however remove the 1TB drive and then tried booting from the 500GB NVMe M.2 SSD. It didn't work. I've also tried just disabling the 1 TB drive. It was the same response as removing it. I can clone the other direction and boot from the 1TB drive every single time. Just not clone to the 500GB NVMe M.2 SSD and have a successful boot. 

This all started with a Windows 10 update that sent things into a tailspin. I have also been unable to recover from that using every Microsoft tool available. I think it has something to do with trying to clone from a large capacity driver to a smaller one. I think that because I have been able to clone from this 1TB drive to another one of the same size. It boots flawlessly. I have also searched thoroughly and the only two resolutions I have seen for users having similar issues was 1. removing source drive from the PC, or 2. Using another brand software to perform the task. 

I hate that too because I do like Acronis., but I have to have a more stable platform. 

Thank you again Steve.

Happy Holidays,

Ruben

I have moved my OS from SATA SSD to an M.2 MVMe SSD on three systems without any problems. In each case I did so by creating a backup of the SATA SSD, then restoring the backup to the M.2 SSD. In each case I used recovery media to create the backup and restore to the M.2 SSD. I prefer backup and recovery rather than cloning as things can go pear-shaped with cloning - I am just risk averse. [I have done successful clones in the past, including cloning an IDE system drive to a SATA HDD, and an SSD to larger SSD; in the former I think I used recovery media in the latter I did so from within Windows - a live clone.

Using an M.2 drives requires the computer to boot using UEFI rather than BIOS/Legacy mode, and the boot device is Windows boot manage (not a particular drive), if more than one Windows installation is found, it is likely you will be unable to successfully boot into Windows.

Not sure that this helps resolve your problem but may help you appreciate the potential for things to go pear shaped (this is not limited to ATI, other backup solutions may have similar issues).

Ian

Ruben, thanks for the update.  I understand your position but have to say that I would definitely consider trying other applications in this scenario if it meant getting the laptop running again properly from the NVMe SSD.

The Copy Disk feature of the free MiniTool Partition Wizard software has served me well for some difficult issues that ATI couldn't deal with!