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Cloned M2 SSD not booting

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Hello, I've bought a new M2 1TB SSD and I decided to clone my actual RAID 0 system to the SSD. I've booted my pc via USB Acronis media boot and used Cloned Disk tool. When I tried to boot via new SSD windows would not load and be on  continuos reboot loop. I disconnected the HDD cables to force boot to the SSD and same deal. I turned off the computer, disconnected M2 SDD booted the pc with the RAID. Turned off the computer, connected the M2 SDD again and loaded windows through the RAID. When I opened windows explorer the see the disks, the SSD apparently seems well cloned. So what I left the computer now doing was a new clone, via Acronis in windows and I will try and see if it boots. But I find it weird why disk clone via acronis usb boot media didn't work. any ideas? Thanks in advance. Regards, Pedro

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Pedro, welcome to these public User Forums.

Please see KB 56634: Acronis True Image: how to clone a disk - and read all the information provided about prerequisites, which includes a section regarding RAID disks.

Doing a clone of a source RAID disk to another drive of the same type is probably the easiest to achieve as both source & target drives will attach via the same controller and use the same controller mode.

Cloning from a source RAID to a NVMe M.2 SSD drive will always be more complicated to achieve and will require changes to be made within your BIOS, assuming that your computer is capable of booting from the new SSD.

One warning that is given in the above KB document is to not boot into Windows with both the original and cloned drive connected.  The act of cloning will duplicate the disk signature of the source drive to the clone one, which can cause problems with Windows due to a signature clash.

I would recommend that you remove the RAID drive(s) and test if you can do a clean install of Windows on the M.2 SSD (after making any changes to the BIOS settings), to prove that it is possible to boot from the new drive?

Hello Steve,

Thank you very much for the warm welcome.

About your reply, after a certain point I did recall something about the signatures and I unplugged the cables of all HDD and tried booting from the SSD but I guess that as I didn't before and tried booting with all disks connected it might have messed up all things.

Anyway, I came to work and left the computer doing a fresh clone again, but runing from windows.

When I get home I am going to unplug the HDD this time before I try to boot from the SSD and see if it works. If it doesn't I will go through with your suggestion of doing a fresh windows install on the SSD and check if it boots.

Overall I just wanted to avoid doing a fresh windows (and other programas) installation to save time. Seems I won't save time any longer anyway.

Best regards,

Pedro

P.S.

Other people suggested me to use Partition Wizard...

Pedro, there are lots of variables involved when doing this type of disk migration and lots of different solutions that may be able to do the job.  You, as the user, have to find the solution that works best for you.  MiniTool Partition Wizard is a very good application and does offer some cloning options though I have only used the free version and mainly for resizing / moving partitions.

Hello Steve,

Eventually I tried every other solution with no success at all.

The SSD works prefectly fine as I installed a fresh windows and boote from it no worries.

I then tried to recover from a full drive C backup I had done with the same results done previous.

Mini Tool Partition Wizard also didn't work.

What leaves to the tedious task of reinstalling all over again and leaves me with the obvious question: why do I want Acronis for then?

Regards,

Pedro

Pedro, is your computer using UEFI or Legacy for the BIOS boot mode into Windows?

If it is UEFI and both your old RAID OS setup and your clean install of Windows both use the same, then you could try just restoring only the C: partition to the clean install drive, as your OS boot files (BCD) should be stored within the EFI system partition.

If trying the above, and you still have the clean install of Windows on the SSD, then make a backup of this before making any changes / restoring.

Acronis announces that is able to restore any system into a completely new system/hardware. And it's clear to me now that is simply no true.

Pedro, I understand the frustration but strictly speaking, your original RAID configuration could be deemed as being dynamic, which are then not supported for cloning as per the KB document I referenced earlier in this topic.

I have no direct experience of doing what you are wanting to do here, and if I were to attempt this, then I would personally try to go from RAID to a single HDD or SSD of the same type first to get that working without changing from SATA to M.2 in that first step.

Steve is correct in differentiating the use of dynamic disks (not supported by Acronis) and using hardware RAID solution or IRST (which can be used to create traditional RAID arrays). The posts in this thread do not indicate how the RAID is being created, which makes it difficult to give assistance.

Ian

Hello,

Good morning to you both. It is in fact a dynamic raid. I am using the onboard controller of my Asus Z370-A motherboard. So what you're saying is that if had two M2 1TB SSD and create a similar raid array as I did with these 2 HDD the cloning should work or even so, since it's dynamic, wont' work at all? Just curious to know if it pays off spending another €129...

Thanks for your input and patience.

Regards,

Pedro