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"Inaccessible Boot Device" error --- Win10 won't launch on NVMe drive using Intel VMD controller?

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I've been trying to restore a drive image of my current laptop to a new ASUS laptop using Cyber Protect Home Office but keep getting the BSOD and the error message "Inaccessible Boot Device" when I try to bootup Windows 10 (64-bit) on the new machine.

My new laptop has a 1TB Samsung NVMe drive that is using the Intel Rapid Storage Technology VMD controller and I'm pretty sure this is what's causing the problem.  I used Acronis Universal Restore to create the bootable USB stick with the appropriate chipset & storage drivers installed for the new laptop.  I also tried restoring the drive image to my friend's new Dell laptop which also uses a VMD controller for it's NVMe drive, so I thought that would make a difference but I get the same "Inaccessible Boot Device" message after restoring the drive image.

Is Acronis aware of any problems with restoring images to machines with different hardware that use NVMe storage with VMD controllers?  I did some research on Google and it appears these VMD controllers are a new technology for the NVMe drives, and some people suggest switching to ACHI mode in BIOS would fix the problem, but the BIOS on my new laptop won't allow me to switch operating modes from VMD to ACHI to control the NVMe drive.

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Fred, welcome to these public User Forums.

There are known issues with creating Acronis rescue media with Intel RST VMD drivers included which could effectively lead to a boot issue because the correct drivers are not found.

See forum topic: Intel VMD Raid0 drive wont show up in the True Image 2021 BootStick! where there has been a lot of discussion related to VMD.

Steve Smith wrote:

Fred, welcome to these public User Forums.

There are known issues with creating Acronis rescue media with Intel RST VMD drivers included which could effectively lead to a boot issue because the correct drivers are not found.

See forum topic: Intel VMD Raid0 drive wont show up in the True Image 2021 BootStick! where there has been a lot of discussion related to VMD.

I hope Acronis works on trying to fix this issue because I think it's going to become more common as people buy these newer laptops with NVMe drives using the Intel VMD controller.  I feel like I did everything right in Universal Restore and injecting the correct and most current storage drivers.

I've done restorations using the exact same drive image on different brands/models of laptops in the last 3 years but they all had SSD or NVMe drives that were using ACHI and I never had any problems getting them to boot up after restoring an image.  My new ASUS laptop doesn't have an option in BIOS to switch to ACHI mode so I'm probably going to return it because that seems like a basic functionality that all NVMe drives should have.  It is an "entry-level" gaming laptop but that is still not a reasonable excuse to omit an important feature like switchable SATA operation between ACHI and RAID.

Fred,

The issue is that these new VMD drivers have multiple INF files which are the instruction sets for the various files of the complete driver package.  Each INF file must be processed to add all necessary files.  Some manufacturers are providing special WinPE driver options to address this situation.  I had a look on the ASUS site but I could not locate such a package.

Enchantech wrote:

Fred,

The issue is that these new VMD drivers have multiple INF files which are the instruction sets for the various files of the complete driver package.  Each INF file must be processed to add all necessary files.  Some manufacturers are providing special WinPE driver options to address this situation.  I had a look on the ASUS site but I could not locate such a package.

OK, thanks for the update.  I knew there had to be an easy explanation since I inserted all the most current chipset & storage drivers I could find on the ASUS tech support page for my particular model of laptop into Universal Restore like I've done many times before.  As a comparison test, I was able to get my drive image restored on my friend's Dell laptop and it booted up normally into Win10, but that's only because the BIOS on his laptop allowed the VMD control to be de-activated and instead ACHI mode could be activated for the NVMe drive.  I don't know what this VMD controller really adds to performance over ACHI, but it's going to cause a lot of hassle for Acronis users who are accustomed to painless drive restorations on their new machines.  I've been using ATI for 15 years and never ran into this kind of roadblock before.