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Windows 10 won't boot to USB (Old HDD) so I can clone to new SSD

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Hoping for some help.  Windows 10 is killing me. I took my current HDD which is working perfectly out of laptop, replaced with new SSD. I set the bios to Legacy boot for USB then try to restart and have my computer booted up on the USB enclosure which is my HDD I want to clone to the SSD inside the laptop.  Windows keeps saying no operating system when I restart. I tried multiple times.  One time it restarted and wanted to go to a advanced screen for repair.  Another time it said "diagnosing windows"  It is always something but what I want.  Never ending loop of not starting from my HDD which is in an enclosure.  What am I doing wrong? Any ideas people?  Thanks in advance

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Please consult the documentation on cloning.  There are also some videos on the subject on YouTube.  You DO NOT boot into the  drive you have in the enclosure.   You must create Recovery Media using the Media Builder function of the Windows installed True Image app and boot the machine from that media to perform the clone.

Ditto.  Alternatively, take a full disk image of the original drive and save elsewhwere.  Then retore the image to the new drive, but the drive must still be internal in order to boot (and should be on the same port/cable as the original drive too to make things easier).  

How to clone a disk with Acronis True Image 2016 - YouTube

or, using the backup and restore method...

02 - SunGod2009 - How to backup and restore using Acronis True image - YouTube

 

 

Agreed, I did that.  Windows 10 still put up a prompt that said "diagnosing problem" one time and "Your Pc ran into a problem and needs to restart. We'll restart for you."  The third time I went through the same sequences and then hit advanced so I could get the computer to boot from my the patriot drive.  This step is notwhere in the tutorial. 

After booting up to Acronis USB boot I was able to go to tools and get it started.  Now true image says it failed to read from a sector.  It looks as though everything has stopped.

How are you booting the Acronis bootable media?  you need to make sure that if your original OS is installed as UEFI, that you boot the bootable media in UEFI mode.  If your original OS is installed in Legacy mode, you need to boot the bootable media in legacy mode.  These are the same limitation when using your Windows installer media.  If you boot it in legacy mode, you'll end up with a legacy/mbr OS install and if you boot it in UEFI mode, you'll end up with a UEFI/GPT OS install.

Also, to make things a little more simple, how is your original OS formatted - GPT or MBR?  You may want to format the new drive to match ahead of time as well.

Check how your origina OS is installed

Example one time boot / boot overrided menu with UEFi and/or Legacy boot options

It's totally frozen. 

Operation is "preparing" but nothing is happening.  I haven't worked with a program that sticks and lags like this in years.  All of the things you are mentioning seem smart and totally reasonable.  Just wish I was provided all of these steps with screen shots or youtube tutorials with the download or paperwork.  Nice to have you guys helping.  Anything is better than instructions written for windows 7 for a windows 10 computer.  A bit upset with documentation set up with Acronis after download.

Now I think I have to figure out how to check all the sectors of the original drive which is brand new and was working fine but is not able to clone correctly. Windows is "attempting repairs" again.  Back in that loop.  It won't exit out.  I guess some of this could be issues with my HP bios that seems bloated with stuff I don't remember seeing in windows 7 pro. 

Are you doing this in Windows or with the offline media?

IF in Windows, you may have a VSS error/problem in your OS.  You can disable VSS as a test and let Acronis back things up with it's own proprietary Snapapi backup solution instead and see if it goes faster.

If this is with offline media, if it is having trouble reading the source disk, or wiriting to the destination disk you may get similar behavior.  Often times, this can be attributed to bad/dirty sectors on one or both of the disks.  Running "chkdsk /f /r" on both drives and letting Windows searh for dirty sectors, attempt to repair them and/or mark them bad may help after that.  I also typcially configure my backups to ingore bad sectors.  If they're bad, they're bad and there's nothign you can really do anyway.

I'm trying all this with the bootable acronis media i put on a usb drive.  I reset the bios to defaults.  restarted.  Windows says the same problem stuff wants to restart and troubleshoot.  "can't find bootable media"  Got a "your pc device needs to be repaired"  error code 0xc0000225.  Did a restart again got a different scenario.  Now I'm being asked to choose an option to troubleshoot or turn off.  I hit troubleshoot.  Now it asks if I want to reset or choose advanced.  I'm choosing advanced.  From there I have 6 things to choose from.  system restore, system image recovery, startup repair, command prompt, uefi firmware settings, go back to previous build.

 

To the basics first... If you have just the original drive installed, can you get it to boot to Windows.  If so, reboot a few times to make sure it boots as it should.  Once Windows is booting OK, then run chkdsk /f /r on the drive and let it do it's thing and make sure you can boot into windows again when it's done.

From there, it's a bios game if the drive is not bad... even new drives can let us down, I've had to EVO 850's die on me in a matter of months.  It's not typical as we use hundreds of them, but there are bad ones in every bunch

In my Z170x Gigabyte board, I had problems initially too.  Not only did i do the usualy of disabling secure boot, etc, but I found that the only way I can boot Windows is to have "windows boot manager" at the top of the boot order.  My system will not let me boot Windows by selecting a specific hard drive like I've been accustomed to in the past. 

If Acronis is failing to read a "bad sector", it's a good sign you really have a bad sector and it can't read it.  For now though, remove all bootable drives other than the original OS and go from there to get the OS to boot.  Make sure secure boot is off, if you have a legacy install on a UEFI bios, make sure legacy mode is enabled.  Then check your boot order and make sure "Windows boot manager" is first if that is an option.

I have restarted. replaced origingal drive which is a few months old.  scanning now. computer said it had no errors but I checked anyway. Also 0% fragmented. etc.  Everything seems fine.  I put SSD drive back in enclosure and tried to view the drive through file explorer.  Can't see it.  I'm going to try and reboot. 

 

 

 

I just plugged in the drive to my mac.  Not readable. I reinitilized it which I couldn't do with windows for some reason.  took it back to my pc to format to NTFS.  There are no errors on either drive

 

 

Maybe the enclosure, usb cable or port is part of the problem?  Double check the drive connector and enclosure connector to make sure pins are not bent or broken.  I hate UsB 3.0 drives with the flat micro usb connector - they always seem to be loose to me so I've gotten in the habit of getting adapters that only have full size USB ports on both ends.  Or better yet, a USB full size to SATA that requires no enclosure or a hard drive dock/duplicator with full size USB, which by the way also does direct cloning of same size disks or smaller disks to larger disks (assuming both disks are in good shape).

I have done all you have said.  I just turned off secure boot which was enabled by default.  I had to enter a code in bios on restart to complete the secure boot change. restarting now.

yup secure boot off is a must for booting any external media!  After that, try your one time boot menu and make sure to boot the bootable media in the correct mode (UEFI or Legacy) to match how the original OS is currently installed.  This is important during restores as it will try to format the disk based upon how the media was booted before restoring.

My SSD drive is in an enclosure.  It is formated to NTFS.  My patriot USB stick is formatted to NTFS it was Fat32 before. I just reformated.  How do I make sure the bootable media is in the correct mode?  Are you talking about the SSD which I was wanting to clone to or the bootable USB?

The USB stick should be Fat32.  Acronis won't let you create bootable media on anything other than a Fat32 formatted UsB removable drive.  

You would only format the Patriot USB drive to NTFS if you plan to to store images to it... so that you don't have a single file limit of 4gb.

You should not attempt to clone or restore an image to the Patriot drive - it will never boot - this is a Windows limitation.

To check if you're booted into the recovery media in the right mode...

1) Check how your original OS is installed first

2) Use your one time boot / boot override menu option.  You should see a legacy boot and a UEFI boot.  Pick the one that matches how your OS was installed

Example of a  one time boot / boot overrided menu with UEFi and/or Legacy boot options

 

ok i reformatted the usb stick and got the acronis bootup profile on it.  That is sorted. 

The Disk management shows volume 260 mb (Healthy EFI) then C: Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition) then Healthy (Recovery Partition)

The SSD is smaller than my original drive about 1/2 the size btw... It says Healthy (Primary Partition)  Both are NTFS

OK, at this point, boot your Acronis offline media in UEFI mode with your one time boot/ boot override menu.

Then you can try to clone from the original to the smaller SSD - it may work if the original drive data can fit on the new drive and still have room.  If it's just too close, it may not work though.  Hopefully it does.

If there is enough space, but it fails to clone from the larger drive to the smaller one (it's always easier if goign to the same size drive or bigger - smaller is the problem if there isn't enough space), you can try taking a full disk backup instead of a clone.  Selecect the entire disk and all partitions, backup and save the image to another drive - can't be the one you plan to restore the image to.  Then, restore the image, selecting all paritions to the new drive.  Put the restored drive where the original was, leave the original completely disconnected and reboot the machine.  Should be a successful boot if the backup and restore don't give any errors.

OK i am not sure what the "one time boot/boot override menu is... Is that in the bios or Acronis program on restart?

 

Each system typcially has a button you press after restarting to get to a boot override menu.  Dell's are usually F12.  HP is usually ESC or F1, it depends on the manufacturer and/or model.  My Gigabyte motherboards have all been F12 as well. 

Alternatively, in some bios, when in the bios config, there is a boot override menu (often on the last page or tab where you save the settings).  In these cases, you will see all of the bootable drives there and can select the one to boot into directly and then it will boot into that one.  

In bios the UEFI boot order is OS boot Manager.  Secure Boot is disabled. Legacy disabled. Network Boot disabled. If I don't go to bios the computer goes into that repair loop.  It spins forever then tells me my PC ran into a problem.  Inaccessablec Boot device then it restarts to "diagnose your PC"  This is so tiresome.  It then says your PC did not start correctly.  I can restart or go to advanced options

I choose advanced options it says I can use a device, continue, troubleshoot or turn off.  I'm going to try use a device

It then shows I can choose 3 things:  Internal Hard Disk or Solid State Disk, EFI USB device, EFI DVD/CDROM - It is not showing the Patriot drive like it did when my legacy setup asked it to recognize USB devices. But I don't know if that is relevant.

Computer is frozen again.  The patriot USB disk must be bad?  Could the Acronis program be buggy like 2015 was?

Restarted again.  Crashed again.  Frozen again.  This is either a USB patriot problem or the program is buggy.  I'm pretty worn out.  Any ideas?

I'd try a new drive.  I use the boot media to deploy a ton of different hardware and have no issues (pretty much any Dell since 2006, Surface Pro's, Asus T100 and T200, Acer Aspire Switch 10, Winbook, etc etc etc).

When you got Acronis to load and then it froze, what happened exactly?

You should see a black screen with white letters and the option to pick Acronis.  Pick Acronis and give it some time to load into memory (it's creating a ramdisk).  On fast machine with a decent amoutn fo memory this can take a minute or so.  On a slow machine with limited memory, could take a couple of minutes.  

I decided to unplug everything and try again one last time.  I decided to plug the two drives in different USB ports.  I then restarted. BOOM.  The Acronis repair disk loaded up without all the BS.  The cloning software loaded and did not crash like it did two times before midstream.  I don't have the answers to why this worked.  Only thought is that the USB controller has a preference in bios to order of actual USB ports.  Maybe they are numbered internally some how.  Maybe its random or maybe not.  Who can say?  I finally put her back together again.  New drive is cloned and sitting where she should.  Very stoked.

I guess I got a good lesson in persistence.  I almost gave up. 

Thanks Bobbo_3C0X1 for your help, and ideas.  It is greatly appreciated getting this thing working finally! It's a selfless thing to help people. It doesn't go unnoticed. 

Cheers,

 

Paul

Awesome!  Glad it all worked out.  

On your external drive - what type of disk (full size 3.5 or 2.5) and adapter are you using too?  Some PC's have different USB connectors on the front than the back.  On my old motherboard, If I used a spinning 2.5" on the front USB ports without external power, sometimes the drive would just randomly drop out as files were being written off of it or copied to it.  If I moved that same drive and adapter to a back port, it had no issues.  I could also use the front port with the same adatper and an SSD without issue.   Basically, it was on an underpowered USB port.  If I was using a powered USB external adapter, it would have been fine, but took me awhile to figure this out since I had used the same adapter and spinning 2.5 drive on other systems and usb ports without issue.