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Acronis True Image for Western Digital - Multiple Problems Trying to Replace Boot Drive

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I'm having the hardest time swapping out my existing sata SSD (my boot drive with win11 OS) with a new Nvme SSD because I can't restore or clone to the new drive and have it actually boot.  I purchased a Western Digital external hard drive that came with Acronis software and I've been trying to use Acronis TI for WD to clone or restore my existing SSD image to the new drive and then boot from it.

I'm trying to create a WinPE bootable USB from Acronis.  It fails every time with almost no information "failed to create bootable media".  I get the same error when I try to create to an ISO directly.  Any ideas?  Here is some more background:

Things I tried:

Use Acronis TI Restore option in Windows

-backup old drive to external Western Digital (WD) drive

-restore from drive image backup to the new drive

-shut the computer down, remove the drive old drive and boot from new drive

-RESULT:  BSOD - boot device unavailable

Create a bootable WinPE recovery USB so I can boot to that and restore the image

-use recovery tool option in ATI, select simple WinPE option

RESULT:  Generic "Failed to create bootable media" error. I've tried many times with different FAT32 USB drives. I get this same error when I try to create an ISO file instead of a USB.

I have a feeling if I could get this winPE recovery disk created it would allow me to finish this.  Since I can't, I tried some different thing (listed below).

 

Create bootable Linux recovery USB so I can boot to that and restore the image

-use recovery tool option in ATI / choose Linux

-bootable usb was successful

-boot to that and pick the restore option 

-RESULT:  WD external USB drive is not visible as a source to select from (I've tried plugging into different USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports - same result)

 

Create bootable Linux recovery USB so I can use it to clone the old SSD to the new one

-use recovery tool option in ATI / choose Linux

-bootable usb was successful

-boot to that and pick the clone option

-Clone successful

-shut down, remove old drive, power on

-RESULT:  BSOD boot device unavailable

 

Thanks in advance for any guidance!

Jim

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Hello!

Support for the Acronis OEM  software is handled through the company whose product contained the Acronis OEM software, as they are best equipped to understand the specific OEM application as well as the relationship between the Acronis software and their product. Acronis works closely with the OEM on investigating and solving issues that arise. https://kb.acronis.com/content/2201

Best regards.

Jim, welcome to these public User Forums.

I would suggest trying the following approach to see if it would work for you.

First, if not already done, install the new NVMe SSD inside your computer along with the working SATA SSD, then boot into Windows from the original SSD so that Windows can identify and install any additional device drivers that may be needed for the new hardware.

Note: you may need to reformat the NVMe SSD if you see any disk signature clash type errors when booting from the original SSD.  You can also use the Acronis tools option to 'Add new disk' if this is available with your WD OEM version of Acronis - choose to prepare the new SSD for GPT but leave it as unallocated space!

Assuming that you can boot into Windows 11 from the original SSD with the new one installed.

Run the Acronis Clone operation from the original SSD to the new NVMe SSD from within Windows using the Active Clone option.

See KB 61665: Acronis True Image 2019, 2020 and 2021: Active Cloning in Windows

Assuming that the Active Clone completes successfully, then shutdown the computer and remove the original SATA SSD.

Next, go into the BIOS settings and ensure that you are seeing the Boot option as 'Windows Boot Manager' from the new SSD.

Thank you for your reply.  I didn't get a chance to try out your proposed solution because I ended up getting it done last night.  I ended up giving up on the Acronis software and downloaded free Macrium Reflect.  it wasn't particularly smooth but ended up working.

For posterity, here are the exact steps I followed:

Boot Win11 from the original SATA SSD.

Using Macrium, create a boot disk

Using Macrium, create a disk image of the SATA SSD (onto the external WD drive)

Power off 

Remove original SATA SSD

Boot using Macrium boot disk

Restore the image to the NVMe SSD

Try to boot from NVME SSD - got BSOD - bootable device unavailable

Boot again to the Macrium boot disk

Choose a "Fix windows boot issue" for NVMe SSD

boot from NVMe SSD - got BSOD - bootable device unavailable

Boot to separate Win11-generated recovery boot disk

Choose "diagnose/fix boot issues"

Action Completed with message "could not fix boot issue"

Tried 1 last time to boot from NVME SSD and IT WORKED!

 

I have no idea what the underlying issue was but things are running great now.  I immediately backed up my new drive using Acronis TI (and Macrium for good measure).