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Unable to boot from cloned drive

Thread solved

Hi all

First post here, hopefully this is the right place to ask for such help, and also hopefully it's a simple fix.

I'm trying to clone the 120GB SSD of a Windows 10 PC to a larger 480GB SSD to increase my available disk space.  I've tried this using Macrium Reflect originally which also didn't work, so I decided to try Acronis.  

The clone process completes without any issues but the "new" drive is not bootable, and nothing I try will get it to boot.  All the partitions were copied as is (with the exception of the "main" partition which I extended to take up all the usable space on the larger drive.  I made sure to select the "bootable device for this PC" option in the clone process.

Checked in the BIOS of the PC and the new drive is selected as the top bootable device, but I don't get any errors when trying to boot.  It just sits on a blank screen with a flashing cursor and goes nowhere.  If I pull up the list of the available boot devices in BIOS with both drives plugged in, under the old 120GB drive it shows a sub option called "Windows Boot Manager" which boots immediately if I select it.  I do not get any such option on the new drive.

It's my first time using disk cloning software so I'm not sure if there's a step I'm missing out somewhere.  

Any questions or any more info needed, please let me know

Thanks in advance

Kevin

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Kevin, welcome to these public User Forums.

How are you performing the clone operation here?  Are you doing this from within Windows or have you created Acronis bootable rescue media and are booting from that media to do the clone?

How are you trying to boot from the cloned drive?  Is the new SSD installed within the computer or is it attached externally via USB ??

Given that you can see an option for 'Windows Boot Manager' in the BIOS, this tells me that you have a UEFI boot machine and therefore you need to see the same option for the new SSD for it to boot correctly.

Note: you should remove the old SSD and install the new SSD in its place then check again for 'Windows Boot Manager' in the BIOS boot settings.  Windows will not boot from an external USB drive!

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Posts: 2
Comments: 1727

Hello Kevin!

We have raised a ticket to help you with the issue.

The reference ticket is 06184371.

You can expect an email from our support as soon as possible.

Best regards.

Kevin,

Take Steve's advise and remove the original (source drive) from the computer leaving only the larger cloned drive attached (internal connection) and look to see if Windows Boot Manager appears in the Boot list.  If it does the drive should boot properly.

Hi Steve, thanks for your reply.

I did carry out the clone from within Windows (running on the old SSD).  I can certainly try running it from the Acronis bootable media instead.

With regards to the cloned drive, it was installed in the PC itself and not connected externally via USB.  When I tried to boot from the new drive, I had unplugged the old SSD, and as such the new SSD was the only bootable device connected to the PC.  

When I hit the hotkey in the BIOS to bring up the bootable devices list, it showed the SSD as an option but the "Windows Boot Manager" sub option was absent.  Trying to boot from the new drive gives a blank screen with a flashing cursor and does nothing else.

I will try re-running the clone process from the rescue media instead and let you know what happens.  I won't be able to do this now until tomorrow morning but I will report back once I've tried this.

Thanks

Kevin

Kevin,

Question, did your computer reboot or request reboot during the clone process?  If yes than this indicates that the application could not perform a "Live" (Windows online) clone of your disk drive from within the application.  When this happens and your machine reboots it defaults to a Linux environment to complete the clone process.  That process is prone to failure.

Hi all.

Thanks for the replies.  I carried out Steve's suggestion of running the clone process from the rescue media version of the software and it worked perfectly the first time.  I think as you suggested, running it from within a live Windows session may have resulted in some critical files being locked and unable to be accessed, which was causing the boot issues on the clone.  Running it from the recovery partition using the rescue media didn't seem to have that problem and it booted into Windows from the new drive straight away.

Thanks for your assistance with this.

Cheers

Kevin

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Posts: 2
Comments: 1727

Kevin Kane wrote:

Hi all.

Thanks for the replies.  I carried out Steve's suggestion of running the clone process from the rescue media version of the software and it worked perfectly the first time.  I think as you suggested, running it from within a live Windows session may have resulted in some critical files being locked and unable to be accessed, which was causing the boot issues on the clone.  Running it from the recovery partition using the rescue media didn't seem to have that problem and it booted into Windows from the new drive straight away.

Thanks for your assistance with this.

Cheers

Kevin

Hello!

Thanks for updating thread and sharing what helped to solve the issue.

Best regards.